16 Comments
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BowTShrike's avatar

Great post, but also watch out for the scams.

If you join discord, you get tons of scammers DMing you about token launches, other discords, etc. They're all scams. Delete and/or report. Even better change your settings so that people can't DM you unless you're friends on discord (only accept friend requests from people you know and have a reason to interact with). The project leaders never DM you first to reduce the ability of people to impersonate them.

If you say Metamask support or similar things on Twitter, you get scammer bots auto-replying. They're all scams. Avoid.

Check/use the website from the official docs or link. Sometimes the top Google hit is a scam website (eg raydium)

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Night Owl's avatar

Yes great points.

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Syl25555's avatar

thank you for doing this

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Octillious's avatar

This is outstanding and exactly what I was looking for!

Question in regards to an unwind if you have f’d up with KYC on an exchange. Currently <20k in crypto , would it be best to cash out, take any tax hit, and start over with fresh hardware?

I’m not comfortable using Tornado…

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Night Owl's avatar

I think so, however it's <$20K so might be fine just using fresh hardware for any new crypto.

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BowTiedFowl's avatar

Excellent, actionable walk through. Used your guide to set up Qubes and got traffic routing through a commercial VPN. Seems sufficient for learning and browsing (where I will make newbie mistakes). For the next phase, I plan to set up the self hosed VPN as you suggest but can't figure out how to pay for hosting with connecting it to a real world ID (only have CEX coins). Any suggestions or resources?

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BowTiedIguana's avatar

bitlaunch.io - choose from linode, digital ocean servers or their own offering, payment in 3 major cryptos including BTC

sign up via anon-whonix disposable :-)

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BowTiedFowl's avatar

Even tho I only have KYC coins? Seems like chicken/egg prob - should use non-KYC coins to pay for the service, but need the service to get those coins. Sorry if I'm being too dense/paranoid, but treading slowly and trying to not make irreversible mistakes - thanks!

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BowTiedIguana's avatar

they'll give you $0.10 free credit if you ping their chat and ask, mentioning the BowTiedBull substack (we referred people from the VPN guide). That will get you a server for a few hours which should be long enough to deploy some anon crypto

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BowTiedFowl's avatar

Excellent, thanks!

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Griptoe Guy in Training's avatar

Would love to hear an update on SUSHI in a paid post - with the price dropping to <$3, might be a good degen bet?

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Night Owl's avatar

hmm don't think so; cheap for a reason

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Fatty to thinny's avatar

Made some historical transactions without vpn. Can anyone see my location based on blockchain or just the dapps interacted with?

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BowTiedIguana's avatar

Not anyone, just state level actors, sophisticated crooks, and the people at Consensus (depending on how much they are logging, and I assume they're logging everything forever).

Oh, and your ISP. And anyone else on your network (work / school IT department also). Maybe your neighbours kid.

I'd probably transfer assets into clean wallets and start over if I'd done non-VPN transactions, just to be safe.

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Fatty to thinny's avatar

Thank you ser, got it

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a  valid name's avatar

Transfer assets via tornado.cash, coin join, etc. Otherwise old and new accounts are linked.

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