 Damianos asks, is Bitcoin anonymous? All exchanges and wallets ask for identity. Is Bitcoin an anonymous system? Well, first of all, and this is really important to understand, exchanges may ask for you to prove your identity. That is not Bitcoin. Those are third-party services that operate as banks, allowing you to exchange national currency. And it's because they are exchanging national currency that they are obligated under the laws as third-party companies to ask you for your identity. Your identity is not on the lock chain, and this has nothing to do with Bitcoin. If you install a wallet of your own where you control the keys, there is no identity required. You don't identify yourself to anyone. And therefore, from that respect, there is no link between your identity and, say, the Bitcoin address or the wallet that you installed. So when your wallet generates a private key of its own and then generates a Bitcoin address or several Bitcoin addresses that you can use in your wallet, there is no link between that and your identity. There's no link between that and your IP address and your location and your name and any other identifying information. However, if you use that Bitcoin address in relation to an external service, such as an exchange or merchant, where you then provide your name, address, and things like that, that external service will link the Bitcoin address that you just provided to your real-life identity. As a result, you've just blown the anonymity aspect of Bitcoin. Furthermore, because you will then use that Bitcoin address in your wallet to make transactions, if your identity has been linked to one Bitcoin address and then other Bitcoin addresses are linked to that Bitcoin address due to the activities that you do, for example, transferring money between addresses of your own wallet, using multiple chunks of Bitcoin. We'll talk about that in a subsequent lesson when we talk about UTXO in the blockchain. When you link together and you leave this statistical trail that connects, correlates, very many different Bitcoin addresses together and one of them is connected to your real-life identity, then the others are also connected, probabilistically, statistically connected, to your real-life identity. In practice, it is very, very difficult to use Bitcoin with complete anonymity unless you take relatively strong steps to protect your operational security. You never link any of the addresses you've used to your real identity. In practice, that's very difficult to do. It takes a lot of effort, and most people don't do it. If you acquire your Bitcoin by exchanging national currencies through an exchange where you've provided your ID, obviously that's going to statistically taint all other Bitcoin transactions you do from that point on and correlate them with that identity, and all of these exchanges provide this information either willingly or inadvertently if they get hacked or if they're already hacked by intelligence agencies, they provide that information effectively to everyone in the world. So, if you give your identity to one of these exchanges, you should assume that everyone in the world then has that information. From a security perspective, you should assume that it's already leaked. So, given all of that, Bitcoin is not strongly anonymous. It is pseudonymous, meaning that you use a pseudo-identity, which is your Bitcoin address and the related Bitcoin addresses on the system, and that gives you some degree of anonymity as long as that Bitcoin address is not associated with your real-life identity. There are other blockchain systems that provide stronger levels of anonymity, whereby it is impossible to track which transactions are being made by which addresses, whereas in Bitcoin, anyone can look at an address and see all of the transactions it's made and can see how much money it has, et cetera, et cetera. There are other blockchains where that's not the case, where you cannot track which address is making which transactions. So, Bitcoin is a pseudonymous system, and if you use it by connecting primarily to exchanges and merchants that have your identity, then it is not even a pseudonymous system. In fact, it is a public transaction system where your identity is known. And Damjanos has a follow-up question, which is, how can I buy Bitcoin with my own wallet? Don't I need an exchange? Well, if your attitude towards cryptocurrency is to buy it as an investment, that's very, very true, but you don't have to buy cryptocurrency, you can earn it by providing products and services through your labor, and you can also exchange it for cash by meeting someone in person who's willing to give you cryptocurrency in exchange for cash. And in that case, your identity is not involved in that transaction at all. So there are ways to acquire cryptocurrency by selling products and services that have nothing to do with revealing your identity. Diva asks, recently I decided to create my wallet and I wonder, apart from buying Bitcoin, how else can I get them? In resources I've read there are some tasks which you could do for Bitcoin. Is there a reliable and official marketplace for earning Bitcoin or cryptocurrency? Diva, unfortunately, this is a very tricky question because for many of the things you will find online, they are scams and you need to be very, very, very careful. People will suggest sending you money to your bank account and then giving you Bitcoin or you send money to their bank account and then they give you Bitcoin, et cetera, et cetera. And there's all of these things where they say, okay, just forward this package for me and I'll send you Bitcoin as payment for your task. Almost all of these things you will find are scams. And they work in a variety of different ways, but they basically cheat you out of your money because a lot of bank transactions, cash deposits, checks, et cetera, are reversible and crypto isn't. So this is a difficult topic to deal with. I think the best way to do it is to see what skills you have professionally and what you can offer other people in terms of services and products. So if you make something, you make crafts, you make art pieces, you make servers and desktops, you make whatever, graphic design, then you can sell those things for Bitcoin, whether it's a service or product, your labor, et cetera. And you can get paid. I think that's probably the easiest way earning. The second easiest way is to go to an ATM. Fortunately, many of the other ways of acquiring cryptocurrency are actually scam, so you have to be very careful. Damienos asks, how can I set up my own wallet without providing any identity? That's a great question, Damienos. I can make a number of suggestions. I do not endorse any of these wallets, but I know other people have used them in the past and they like them. There are a number of different wallets that you can use. What you're looking for is a wallet that generates a secure mnemonic phrase locally on your own device where that phrase doesn't leave. The best way to do this is to purchase a hardware wallet. If you are not yet involved in crypto enough to have the funds to purchase a hardware wallet, I would recommend the second best option is to download a wallet onto your smartphone because your smartphone is probably the device that is the most secure device you have. Modern smartphone operating systems are extremely secure if you keep up with the updates, have set a pin and are careful about what applications you download. They're extremely secure, more secure than a laptop or desktop device. So if you have an Apple phone, for example, you can go online and review all of the wallets that are available in the App Store, the Apple iTunes App Store and you can find the correct wallet for your needs. I'm not an Apple user, so I'm not sure which wallets are the most popular today on Apple. I believe one of them is BRD, which I know uses BIP39 mnemonic phrases. I know there are others, but I'm not quite sure because I don't use them. On my Android device, I have a whole set of different wallets. I use wallets like mycelium, samurai and a number of others, green address, which has multi-sig capabilities. And these wallets are well-built, secure, well-reviewed, used for many years and they generate the keys on your device and therefore you are in control of your funds. Those are good ways to start. None of these require you to put in your identity. On your desktop, you could download a wallet like the Electrum wallet or the Wasabi wallet, for example. And those are also good choices that you can apply that give you a degree of control over your funds. However, it is much more difficult to secure a desktop wallet. I recommend when you use desktop wallets, you only use them in conjunction with a hardware wallet where the keys are actually generated and stored on the hardware wallet and not on the generic operating system. Most desktop operating systems are not secure enough, most desktops and laptops are not secure enough to hold crypto funds. Andreas, to what extent do you recommend coin joins? Do you still think this could be made illegal? And to reiterate for a bit more context, what is a coin join? A coin join is some kind of implementation where a transaction involves multiple participants providing inputs, meaning that a transaction can have multiple inputs and multiple outputs. Neither the inputs nor the outputs have to come from the same person or the same wallet or the same controlling entity. You could have yourself and three of your friends construct a transaction where you take an input each and sign it and then make a payment each. You have four inputs and four outputs so that each of you gets to pay your favorite thing, whatever that may be. And if you look at that transaction, it's very difficult to see where the inputs and where the outputs are going. Now, if you chain several of these together so that you have a transaction with 100 participants and 100 inputs, 100 outputs, and then those outputs are sent into a transaction that has 100 inputs and 100 outputs and those outputs are sent into a transaction. We do multiple rounds of these. By the end of it, it's incredibly difficult to do statistical analysis of where those coins come. However, you do know, or rather the analytics surveillance companies, the monitor blockchain, the blockchain surveillance companies, they do know that those outputs came from a coin join because it's fairly obvious that a transaction that has 100 inputs and 100 outputs is unlikely to be a run of the mill payment by a single user's wallet. So a coin join doesn't provide identity information. However, as far as surveillance companies are concerned, it will taint your output points because they will then flag that as high risk if you try to move those outputs further down the chain to a merchant or exchange that is using surveillance companies, they both spy on its users and score the risk of transactions. So do I recommend coin joins? It depends on the circumstances and what you're trying to do. If you regularly move money into and out of, regularly to entities like exchanges and you want that money to still work on those exchanges, you will carry your identity with you on all of those transactions. And if you do coin join somewhere in between, you may find your account being shut down, frozen, or even your coin seized by this custodial entity because they consider them tainted, risky, or something like that. If you're doing transactions between your own wallets, private wallets of other individuals, you're using it to do things where you need to preserve privacy, like paying payroll for employees and things like that. And neither you nor the others in the chain are particularly interested in exchanging these for fiat or using them to buy products from regulated merchants and things like that. Then that might be a very good privacy solution for you. As to whether this could be made illegal, the word illegal should always be followed by the question where? Could this be made illegal? Illegal where? Dancing is illegal in some countries. Legal, illegal depends very, very much on jurisdiction. I can't even tell you what is legal or illegal in many countries because it's impossible to know. Even in a single country, let's say the United States, if you ask a lawyer, is this legal? They'll ask you where? Because the next question is in which state? Because there are overlapping state and federal jurisdictions, especially when it comes to things like money transmission. And it also depends on what type of entity we're talking about if it's an individual versus a corporation. A corporation that is doing things that involve coin joints or transactions like that may be considered a money transmitter on a certain state laws. An individual would unlikely be considered a money transmitter, but again, whether it's legal or illegal, I can't really tell you that. It very much depends on your jurisdiction. So ask a lawyer about that. Preferably a lawyer who understands both tax law as well as various other laws related to and regulations related to money transmission, and anti-money laundering rules and things like that. So, and absolutely it could be made illegal in the future. It may even already be illegal under some interpretations and then it's maybe more a matter of are you likely to be targeted for prosecution? Which is a tricky thing for people who are high profile in this industry and likely to be targeted. So do I recommend coin joints? I can recommend coin joints because I don't know where you live and whether that would be a legal or a smart thing to do. But here's what I can tell you. If you're a political activist in North Korea, if you're a protester in Hong Kong, if you're a part of the opposition movement or political party in Venezuela, if you're trying to overthrow a dictator, do I recommend coin joints? Hell yes I do and if it's illegal, then in many cases it may be just meaning that it is in promotion of justice and morally ethical, perhaps even a moral obligation to fight back against the tyrannical regime that is destroying your country or persecuting a minority or something like that. And then you should absolutely fight back. The fact that it is illegal is part of the problem in tyrannical governments. Even here in the US, everything the founding fathers did, including signing the Declaration of Independence, was not only illegal, it was in fact treason against the crown. We seem to forget sometimes that even treasonous acts can be justified in the face of tyranny.