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Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

It is very easy to track crypto spending. All the information is there on the blockchain for anybody to peruse. The blockchain may not have personal identifications, but you only need to catch a person spending bitcoin once in order to match them to a blockchain wallet.

So if the Israeli government's goal is to track citizen's spending, they will love crypto.

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Not with single use wallets. If you have multiple transactions yes but if you create a new wallet put btc in it and spend it all and each time you spend you create a new wallet it is much like cash.

But you will have to move BTC from the old wallet to the new one. And that will be visible on the blockchain.

No, that's what I am saying you will spend the entire wallet no transfers. If HN was charging me something I will create a new wallet at say paxful, populate it with btc by paying much more than exchange rate in exchange for giftcards or wire (or cash if they are local) and then pay HN, never use that wallet again. Of course the threat to this has been thay american/western services have all become KYC (mandatory ID check) still possible with chinese and other services.

Another alternative is to store it all in XMR and populate single use btc wallets with one time XMR transfers all while VPN+Tor'd.

But the initial loading is traceable. wires are completely traceable. Gift cards above $100 or so in many jurisdictions require tracing (and while they are more easily exchanged / tumbled / whatever than credit cards, that's still a hard problem).

Not if you buy in cash. I have done so for more.

But XMR is private?

I’ve been considering “laundering” my own crypto through a handful of bespoke smart contracts that I write myself since I doubt anyone on IRS salary would actually read my source code.

At which point you are probably guilty of "structuring". Which is a crime all on its own.

Also, that only holds up until someone actually looks at you.

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