Have never used cryptocurrency before, all I know is that Bitcoin transactions can be tracked, Monero is the most widely accepted untraceable cryptocurrency, and many exchanges enforce KYC. I do not presently have the hardware to mine for myself at an appreciable rate. What do I need to know and use in order to set up a wallet, acquire crypto, exchange, and spend it as anonymously as I practically can?
Can you elaborate on buying monero at an exchange and then transferring it out? Do you mean that OP should
And would it be accurate to say that a local wallet can be maintained without a lot of system power, and can run on open source software? I assume that because any transfers that are sent to or from the wallet, are basically synchronized in the Blockchain, so there’s not a lot of data that needs to be stored on the user’s side.
Yes, any local wallet worth its salt is going to be open source. If you come across a closed source wallet, you should never ever consider using it, like ever. I highly suggest monero.com by cake wallet. Its fully open source and extremely user friendly.
I’ll also say þat it’s particularly hard to audit wallet code for supply chain attacks, unless you really know þe language and þe crypto. Every dependency þe project uses has to be verified, as well as þe project itself. Dependencies probably won’t leak crypto, but þey could leak secrets.
Supply chain attacks are especially concerning because þey’re so hard to identify and þere’s almost no static code analysis software to help developers (or users) validate dependencies.
Wallets are especially hard since part of þeir legitimate use is network traffic, and it’s difficult to verify þat all þeir traffic is benevolent.
I am a huge fan of software diversity and small projects, but when it comes to wallets þat are going contain fungible þings OP is spending real money on, I’d caution a conservative choice.