How to send crypto anonymously Seven links tie a payment back to you. Here's how to cut each one before you send.

01What anonymous can mean for one send

Start with the honest part. On Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT, the payment itself is public. bitcoin.org says it plainly: "All Bitcoin transactions are public, traceable, and permanently stored in the Bitcoin network." ethereum.org calls its chain "a public and transparent ledger by design".

So the goal isn't to vanish. It's to cut what connects the two ends: your wallet and theirs. One payment can leave seven links:

How a wallet gets tied to a name in the first place is in our main guide, the six places a wallet meets your name. Analysts read these same links when they group addresses by owner. This guide is about one send, in the order you meet each link.

02Step #1: Start from coins that aren't tied to your ID

This is the big one. The Bitcoin Wiki says avoiding "the privacy invasion of AML/KYC is probably the single most important thing an individual can do".

Why? Because exchanges that checked your ID keep the record, and when they send coins to another firm, the FATF travel rule passes your details along. Every hop after that starts from your name.

you withdraw 0.01 BTC from an exchange and pay a seller straight from that withdrawal. The seller's address now sits one hop from your verified account.

The fix: swap those coins with no account into a fresh wallet first, or start from coins you got without ID. Our guide to buying crypto without KYC covers every route to a first coin.

03Step #2: Never send straight from the wallet you use every day

On Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron, the receiver sees the address you paid from, and everything that address has ever done. Pay from your everyday wallet and you hand them your balance and your history.

The fix: one wallet per purpose. A send wallet, funded once for this payment, shows the receiver one coin arriving and one coin leaving. Nothing else.

04Step #3: Ask for a fresh receiving address

bitcoin.org's advice is one line: "you should use a new Bitcoin address each time you receive a new payment". The Bitcoin Wiki explains why reuse "is very damaging to privacy because that links together more blockchain transactions".

On Ethereum and Tron, an address is an account, and its whole history comes with it. So there, "fresh" means a new account, not just a new string.

05Step #4: Watch the change

A Bitcoin payment spends whole coins and sends the rest back to you, like paying with a note and getting change.

Round numbers give it away: the Bitcoin Wiki notes "Many payment amounts are round numbers, for example 1 BTC or 0.1 BTC." And spending two coins together joins them: the white paper itself says such transactions "necessarily reveal that their inputs were owned by the same owner".

The fix: spend one coin from a send-only wallet, and avoid round amounts. The rules that link Bitcoin addresses go deeper.

06Step #5: Put time between leaving and landing

This is the step the research makes impossible to ignore. The 2026 study found that "a withdrawal that occurs one minute after a deposit has only a handful of plausible sources", however many people used the pool.

The median wait among the users it matched was 0.84 days. Half of them left in under a day. The authors' advice: leave funds "for weeks or months". The Bitcoin Wiki lists timing correlation as an attack in its own right.

The fix: let days pass before the coins move on. If you'd rather the delay be built in, Stealth lets you pick the day your coins land.

07Step #6: Don't send exactly what just arrived

An amount is a fingerprint. The Bitcoin Wiki describes "searching the entire block chain for output amounts", and the 2026 study saw it in practice: users who deposit an exact amount "tend to preserve the significant digits" when they withdraw.

1,250 USDT arrives from an exchange, and 1,250 USDT goes out an hour later. Two steps broken at once: timing and amount.

The fix: send a different amount from anything recent, and don't let a fee pin it to the source.

08Step #7: Hide where you send from

Your IP address can sit right next to your addresses. bitcoin.org warns it's possible "to listen for transactions' relays and log their IP addresses", and suggests a tool like Tor "so that it cannot be logged".

A phone wallet usually asks its own server about your addresses, so that server sees your IP next to every one. Bitcoin Core now encrypts traffic between nodes by default: the Wiki notes BIP 324 is "enabled by default in Bitcoin Core 27.0 and later versions".

The fix: connect over Tor, or run your own node. A VPN only changes who sees your IP; it changes nothing on the ledger.

09Which coin to send

The seven steps work on any coin. What the coin itself shows is a separate question:

• Bitcoin and Ethereum: public, every payment, forever.
• USDT: public, plus an issuer that can freeze it. Why USDT adds an issuer.
• Monero: getmonero.org says "The sender, receiver, and amount of every single transaction are hidden", using stealth addresses, ring signatures and RingCT.
• Zcash: "Transparent addresses make that information public", while shielded ones keep it private.

That's why many people swap into Monero to pay, then out again. On the legal side: FinCEN says a person paying on their own behalf with privacy coins "would not be a money transmitter", and from 10 July 2027 EU exchanges may not keep accounts in anonymity-enhancing coins, while wallet software you hold yourself is outside that ban. More in who the law binds.

10Case study: a trail that ran for years, in the DOJ's words

Here's how tracing works in a real court filing: the Bitfinex statement of facts, filed in February 2022. Special agents "traced the stolen funds" through five stages:

The funds sat in one wallet "dormant until January 2017", moved through a darknet market, seven accounts at one exchange and more wallets, and ended at "accounts owned by" the two people charged, at six other exchanges.

Look at what undid it: the last hop landed where a name was on file (step #1), and the coins were merged on the way (step #4). Years of waiting didn't matter once both ends met a name. Our Bitcoin tracing guide covers the same case from the DOJ's announcement.

11Mistakes that undo a private send

1. Paying from the exchange withdrawal address

   The receiver is one hop from your verified account. Swap first.

2. Reusing last month's receiving address

   Every payment it ever had is linked. Ask for a new one.

3. Sweeping the change into your savings wallet

   That joins the send wallet to everything you own.

4. Forwarding the exact amount the same hour

   Timing and amount, both at once.

5. Posting the transaction link in a chat

   A public link, with your name next to it.

12Check your planned send

Describe the payment you're about to make. The check shows which links stay open, and the fix for each.

13What our desk keeps when you send through it

Now it's your turn. Swap into a fresh wallet on our swap with no ID, then make the payment from there. Paying one person? Start from what they should get.