Another method of getting bitcoins anonymously is using peer to peer services now peer to peer services,
as the name suggests, remove the middleman or the middle entity that facilitates exchange in fiat or
normal currency with cryptocurrency.
So with Coinbase and all of the other exchange websites, there is a middleman or an entity or a company
or a bank that is acting in the middle.
We give this entity our fiat currency or normal currency, and we get crypto instead.
And usually these companies and entities would require extensive information about us, would require
us to verify our identity and so on.
Therefore, they're great in terms of security, but they're not very private or anonymous.
On the other hand, with peer to peer, it really depends on the person that is selling you the bitcoins.
So you might be able to find a seller in your area that is willing to give you bitcoins without verifying
your identity.
A lot of sellers also accept cash in person, so you'll literally be able to walk in, give them cash,
and then get your bitcoins in your wallet.
This is great.
So this is similar to using an ATM, but there is no cameras, there is no shops, so it can be even
more anonymous.
Now if you go on bitcoin dot org and look at the exchange page that I have in here, we already discussed
the exchange websites, like I said in here, like Coinbase and all of them.
If you scroll down, you'll get to the HTTP section that shows you the most common and most popular
peer to peer services that you can use to get bitcoins.
Now, the top three services in here, they are peer to peer, so there is no middleman.
But they either require you to verify your identity, to sign up, or they only accept payment methods
that would require an ID such as transferring money using Western Union and other services where you
have to show your ID when you're transferring the money.
The last two in here, Localbitcoins and Paxful are slightly better because they offer a large number
of payment methods, including cash in person.
Now local bitcoin does not offer cash in person anymore, but it used to.
Paxful still does that and I'll show you how to use it in a minute.
But before using Paxful, I want to give you a quick look on Localbitcoins.
I already have it open in here and using this website is very, very simple.
You type the amount that you want to exchange for bitcoins.
For example, we can type 25.
You select the currency that this amount is in.
You select the country that you are in, and you select the payment method that you want to pay with.
And as you can see, there is a lot of payment methods in here.
You can pay by cash at ATM.
You can do a cash deposit, you can do a bank transfer and so on.
Now, as you can see, a lot of them would require you to present an ID or at least verify your ID when
using the services.
And like I said, this website used to offer cash in person, but it doesn't anymore.
So you can actually just keep this on all online offers and search and you'll see all of the offers
that's available in your area, in your country in which you can get bitcoins with.
So as you can see, we have a seller here that accepts add cash and you can see these guys accept bank
transfer and you can just look for whichever is best for you and pick it from here.
Now, one more thing that I'd like to note.
Keep in mind that in here you're using a peer to peer service.
So it's similar to buying stuff from eBay.
You want to make sure that the person you're buying bitcoins from has a good rating.
So if you look in here, the first number that you see between the two brackets, this is the amount
of exchanges that he's done.
And as you can see, he has 100% positive feedback.
This guy right here has done more than 20,000 exchanges and he has 100% positive feedback.
So he is a really, really good seller to get from.
Now, once you find the seller that you're happy with, all you have to do is literally click on buy
and the website will take you through the steps that you need in order to get your bitcoins.
Now, using this is very, very simple and intuitive.
That's why I'm not going to spend time on it, especially that this website does not offer cash in person,
which, like I said, is the most anonymous payment method.
Instead, I'm going to show you how to use a website called Paxful.
Like I said, it's the second website that we have in the list in here.
The reason why I want to focus on this website instead of local bitcoins is because this website has
cash in person.
And again, as you know, this is more anonymous.
Now, I have this loaded in here in my computer.
And as you can see, again, very simple to use.
From the left here, you can pick the payment method that you want.
And as you can see, we have bank transfer, PayPal, Western Union and a lot of other payment methods.
You can even see gift cards, Uber gift cards and so on.
So things that you can't even think of.
But what we're looking for is cash.
And as you can see, we have in here cash in person.
So that's what we want.
The amount that I want to transfer, I'm going to put it in euros because I live in a European country.
So let's put 20 and that's going to be euros.
It's telling us how much that will be equivalent to in bitcoins.
And we're going to click buy bitcoin now to search for all this others that exchange cash to Bitcoin
and accept cash in person.
Now we have no script here detecting a potential cross-site scripting attack.
It's not really an attack.
It's just this website is using Twitter's API.
I'm going to keep this at block anyway.
We're going to click on.
Okay.
And because we're using Tor right now, the website did not get my correct location.
Therefore, I'm going to scroll up and I'm going to select the country from here manually.
So by default, the website should automatically get where you are.
But because we're using Tor, we appear like we're coming from a different country.
That's why the results will not be relevant to us.
So I set this to Ireland.
We're going to search.
And perfect.
As you can see, we only have one result, but that'll do.
You can see this result has more than 1168 positive transactions.
So that's all good.
It's in Dublin, so it's in the same city where I live, so it's perfect.
So you can either click on buy to go ahead and go through the buying process, or you can click on the
seller to get more information about him.
So again, you can see the amount of positive reputation or positive reviews.
We have one neutral review and zero people saying that they had negative feedback with using this service.
Now you can see again in here the email and the ID of this person and the phone number have all been
verified.
So that's good.
You can see the amount of trades he's done, the trade volume, the amount of people that trust him,
and you can see the amount of blocked people.
Now, this should not put you off from a seller.
If you see some blocked people, this might be just people that this seller blocked because they were
conducting fraud.
So it's nothing scary.
If you're buying from someone, you should focus on the positive feedback that you see in here.
Now again in here, you can see the payment methods that this seller accepts.
So they accept cash in person, they accept cash by email, they accept uber gift card and so on.
But I'm going to close this because what we were interested in is cash but in person, which we already
clicked on.
So you can see it actually automatically loaded in this tab.
But if we go back to where we were.
And literally just click on buy here.
The website will take us through the buying process.
Now, before buying bitcoins using this website, we'll have to make an account with them.
Now, the nice thing about this, it's not going to ask you for a lot of personal information.
So as you can see, it's asking us for the email.
We've already created an email that will only use on the darknet anyway.
So I have it in here.
It's John Wick at Blue Dot N, so I'm just going to paste it here.
It's going to ask you to set a username.
We'll set the same username as the email and we'll set a password.
We're going to agree to the terms and conditions.
Now, again, you might want to go through this in details, but for me, it's fine.
I'm going to create the account.
Okay.
So the account has been created, as you can see in here.
But before we can buy bitcoins, we have to go and verify our email.
So I'm going to go to my email and here I'm going to refresh my inbox.
And we have a new message.
We're going to click on it.
We're going to load the verification link that we have in here.
So that's it.
My email has been activated successfully, so I'm just going to go back to the page that we were in
already.
And as you can see, the verification message have disappeared.
So right now we've already set the amount that we want to exchange for bitcoins.
We know how much we should get.
We've already checked our seller, so I'm going to click on Buy now to initiate the process.
You'll get a nice message explaining to you how this is going to work.
So we're going to say, got it.
And basically what you want to do is pay the money here.
Once you do, you click on paid and wait for the money to arrive in your Bitcoin wallet.
If for any reason you don't wish to continue with this, you can just click on Cancel and all of this
will be canceled.
Now on the right, as you can see, we have instructions on how this will work and this might vary depending
on the seller you're buying bitcoins from.
Now, as you can see in here, it's saying we have one hour to make the payment.
If we don't, then the trade will expire.
So I'm just going to send him a message asking where we should meet.
Now.
I've actually waited for this letter to get back to me, but as you can see, I got nothing here.
So I communicated with him using one of the methods shown in here.
Now, obviously, telegram is anonymous enough if you install it on a phone that has followed proper
object that is not used for personal use, that does not contain any personal information.
So I communicated with him and the minimum they do is €3,000.
So the minimum I can transfer into bitcoins is €3,000.
Now that's a bit too much.
I don't want to transfer that much.
I'm only doing this for this course.
Unfortunately, in my country, as you can see, this is the only seller, so there is no other options
for me.
In your case, if there are other setters, you can go ahead and try to start a trade with them.
As you can see, the process is the same.
You communicate with them, you meet up, you give them the money.
Once you give them the money, you click on paid and you wait for the money to arrive in your account.
Now the money will automatically arrive in your wallet in here because when you create a paxful account,
it automatically creates a Bitcoin wallet for you.
And as you can see right now, there is no transactions in mind.
So once you go ahead and pay them and come back here and click on Paid the money, they should transfer
the money into your wallet in here.
Now, as you can see, you even have the address of the wallet here.
If you just want to use it for normal use.
And because you're communicating directly with that person through this chat or through one of the other
methods of communication that they list here, you might even be able to give them the address of your
Electrum wallet.
So as we see before, all you have to do is go to the receive tab, copy this address or QR code and
give it to them.
And they might agree on transferring the money directly into your electron wallet.
If they disagree, that's fine.
You're going to get the money here and you'll be able to send it from here into this wallet.
Again, simply using this address and I will actually cover transferring bitcoins from one wallet to
another in the next lecture anyway.