How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

It just all seems like cosplay. Time, expense and inconvience in order to gain anonimity from casual twitter followers?<p>Will this protect him against a slightly funded and half motivated actor? Probably not.<p>“Announcing Jameson Lopp as a speaker at Baltic Honeybadger 2019 Bitcoin conference #bh2019, (link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bh2019.hodlhodl.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bh2019.hodlhodl.com</a>) bh2019.hodlhodl.com”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;hodlhodl&#x2F;status&#x2F;1099286199783481350" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;hodlhodl&#x2F;status&#x2F;1099286199783481350</a><p>Unless he is making a virtual appearance, just follow him or grab him there.<p>EDIT: I should make it clear I’m not just referencing the article but also the twitter conversations I’ve seen from th author (swatting is a good reason to take some of these steps obviously). For example, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;lopp&#x2F;status&#x2F;920669889064570880" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;lopp&#x2F;status&#x2F;920669889064570880</a>. He even comments himself in that thread “Local PD isn&#x27;t going to send out the SWAT team again without calling me first”

&gt; To register his car, the D.M.V. insisted on a real name — not an L.L.C. — and a street address.<p>I don&#x27;t understand: whose name appears on all the corporate vehicles driving around? A security van for Google, and Amazon delivery truck, a Brinks van: I&#x27;m supposed to think there&#x27;s some employee&#x27;s name on the title? What if that employee leaves?

&gt; To make sure his phone wasn’t keeping a record of everywhere he’d been — and potentially transmitting it to apps he was using — he turned off all its geolocation services.<p>... Of course, IMEI tracking (from tower registration) can get you pretty much all of this data anyway. This article is more about how to partially obfuscate your identity to private actors.<p>It would be interesting to know how fast a professional could unravel all of this. Minutes? Hours?

Bitcoin is the very opposite of anonymous. Permanently recorded for posterity would be a better description. The best you can get is pseudonymous, and that&#x27;s if you never actually spend any of the coin.

Also quite a good checklist for money laundering. I think buying a house in the UK now requires ID for this reason, and there&#x27;s an ongoing campaign to close the loopholes for companies.<p>I do remember when I was briefly the director of a tiny UK non-profit that the company identity information was mandatory .. except for a very small list of those who were exempt because of intimidation, after a nasty terrorist campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gov.uk&#x2F;government&#x2F;publications&#x2F;restricting-the-disclosure-of-your-psc-information&#x2F;restricting-the-disclosure-of-your-information" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gov.uk&#x2F;government&#x2F;publications&#x2F;restricting-the-d...</a>

This article has so little to do with Bitcoin that I think a more descriptive title would have been:<p>&quot;How a Very Wealthy Person Conceals His Name and Address From The Public&quot;

I am surprised it is possible to get a corporate credit card without a human’s name or identity tied to it.

Perhaps I&#x27;m missing something, but the DMV links him to his LLC which is linked to everything else. A quick records search on myself pulled up the requisite registration information, so I&#x27;m left to question how anonymous he actually is.

It&#x27;s weird to see someone publishing info about how he&#x27;s concealing. I&#x27;m hiding, here&#x27;s how I did it. Perhaps, he sees an opportunity in concealing identity business.

A lot of the comments here are about how this wouldn&#x27;t hold up to state actors. I don&#x27;t see anywhere that indicates that this is the goal (except for maybe the title?)

Sounds good, but I suspect many of those steps won&#x27;t actually work. That is, he hasn&#x27;t truly vanished, maybe to online trolls who are into SWATTING.

I might be missing something here, but he&#x27;s buying a bunch of stuff in the name of the LLC but they aren&#x27;t actually LLC expenses. Isn&#x27;t that a violation of tax law at minimum? Possibly something more serious like fraud, no? I have a side business and it&#x27;s an LLC. I know I can&#x27;t just start buying cars, houses, cell phones, etc. and claim them as business expenses.<p>How is he doing that legitimately?

Final step, post it all on NYTimes!<p>Seriously though, the toughest part about seeking anonymity is working against human nature and one&#x27;s need for social validation.

One of my fav Wired articles was about this... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;08&#x2F;gone-forever-what-does-it-take-to-really-disappear&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;08&#x2F;gone-forever-what-does-it-take...</a>

So, does he just never visit family and friends to maintain privacy? Sounds lonely.

The New York Times somewhat ironically won&#x27;t let me read this article in private mode. &quot;You&#x27;re in private mode. Log in or create a free account to continue reading.&quot;

I would be interested to know how he arranged his DNS service.

&quot;Bitcoin evangelist&quot;: <i>The most anonymous way to buy things, of course, is to simply use cash</i>....<p>Buys a house, in cash. Buys another &quot;throwaway&quot; house for his car, in cash. Buys car, in cash. And then claims: &quot;<i>Mr. Lopp estimates that his efforts to disappear have cost him about $30,000.</i>&quot;<p>Yeah, right.

as typical the clickbait title implies much more than reality