Hey everyone, I need help on setting up a light weight crypto flow please.
To be clear, I am not a crypto guy, I hold no currency and doubt I will ever even purchase. I just need a way to be able to receive crypto sent to me and potentially swap it to privacy coins.
So far I have settled on either or both, cake wallet and unstoppable wallet. Reasons are:
- Both will work over a built in tor proxy (more private?)
- Both handle privacy coins (monero and z cash)
- Both do shielded z cash
- Both (or maybe just cake) do silent bitcoin.
I am happy to be corrected but from a little research this all seems relatively easy and sound ways to be a little more private and secure
I also have a nym vpn which is why I considered unstoppable as it works well over mixnet, so perhaps better than tor?
The above are all statements and questions lol so feel free to recommend amendments or alternatives if they are more private still
Other considerations are do I link a cold wallet, even something like cupcake, is there a benefit to a desktop wallet or any privacy security gains with it
Is there anything else simple I have not considered?
To confirm, I won’t be purchasing, just want a safe private way to receive and store, maybe swap, that is relatively simple also
I acknowledge this isn’t financial advice, I just want input from people who know far more about this than me
Many thanks
I’m surprised no one commented on this. I am a total newbie like you. In fact, it sounds like you are more knowledgeable than me. My understanding is that Monero is the only anonymous cryptocurrency by default, and I chose Cake Wallet as my cryptowallet because it is was recommended by PG. Since Cake Wallet launched Monero.com, a wallet exclusively for Monero, I understand why PG prioritized it in their recommendation.
Am I correct in assuming, based on what you’re telling us, that you plan to receive Monero from a contact you personally know?
I ask because this is what I did, but I hate that it makes me heavily dependent on this person. This is a person I trust, but if they weren’t there, I would be in a tough position.
I’m sorry this is all the advice I can offer, as I am a beginner and my knowledge is very limited.
Thanks for the reply. Yeah it’s a bit scary when you are just starting lol.
To confirm no I suspect that most will want to send bitcoin so the way I read it was cake wallet was quite good at handling those transactions relatively privately (I understand bitcoin is not private). And I will potentially swap that into monero to use in a more private way.
So I prefer to use monero or z cash but suspect bitcoin would be what I receive the most
Yeah, it is. I still don’t know what I am doing. I have yet to spend money with my wallet.
All I did was receive funds from someone I know.
That makes sense. I stuck with Cake Wallet for similar reasons. All digital services that accept cryptocurrency accept Bitcoin, so in case I ever crack, I have a wallet. So far, I’ve refused to use Bitcoin, but if I ever do, I would ask the same person to buy it for me, and send it to me. My wallet has no KYC attached to it and I want to keep it that way.
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Coming at this from a similar perspective and I’ve been happy with Cake. Don’t really know what I’m doing but everything’s been fairly self explanatory so far and it seems to have a good reputation within the community.
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Lightning (bitcoin) has better privacy than monero as lightning uses onion routing (encryption) and monero is just obfuscation.
I think ZeusLN is a good wallet.
Interesting I didn’t know that. I have lightning set up but assumed it was just better for bitcoin not that it was better full stop?
I will look at the wallet too. Thank you
OP, because Cake Wallet is recommended by PG I wanted to make sure you are aware it does have support for Lightning.
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Yes i have it toggled, many thanks bud. I knew it was better than not i just didnt realise it became more private than monero!
If you already have a Monero wallet set up (it sounds like it since you mention swapping to privacy coins), why not just accept payments via Trocador? It will automatically convert all donations/payments in any crypto to your elected Monero wallet.
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This is nonsense. While Lightning offers better privacy than on chain Bitcoin (which is a very low bar), especially via the public, it isn’t even close to the strong privacy guarantees of Monero. Take it from the COO of CakeWallet himself:
Bitcoin privacy sucks because we refuse to fix it at the base layer or give devs the tools to build trustless bridges/L2s that can have near-perfect privacy.
As a result:
On-chain privacy sucks (but SP/Payjoin help)
Spark privacy sucks (but is getting better)
Ark privacy sucks (but will hopefully get better)
Lightning privacy sucks (for most users)
This is the raw reality, and is the reason why most people who have a clear need for privacy still use other things like Monero. If we want to change that, we have to be willing to make larger changes to Bitcoin itself
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i had never heard of it thats why 
. Exactly why i posted this thread thank you so much i will go and check it out now
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Trocador also has a “Payments Mode” that allows you to send Bitcoin (or any crypto) by sending Monero. Even if you’re paying in Bitcoin, you can still pay with Monero through it. Trocador itself is just a swap aggregator, so all it does is negotiate the best rates for a swap to occur.
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so i guess this is where we get a bit off the topic of privacy, but what is the difference to me in terms of using tracador to doing it in the wallet (say cake wallet). Is it s different service or different rates?
I also would strongly recommend Cake Wallet for your use case. Be sure to enable TOR in the settings.
For receiving Bitcoin, an important privacy consideration is address reuse. Silent Payments fixes this, but support for it is lacking in some wallets. When not using Silent Payments, always generate a new receiving address for each transaction.
Regarding security: That will depend a lot on your device and opsec. If the amount you will be receiving is small, then a modern up-to-date smartphone should suffice. If we’re talking large amounts, get a hardware wallet.
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I did not know this! Thanks for sharing. Been using Pheonix but might come back to Cake.
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And would you consider cupcake off line enough, or go for a proper cold wallet?
Cake Wallet uses Trocador as only swap providor. It is just more convenient doing in directly in Cake Wallet than using their website.
Please note that Trocador uses centralized exchanges for their swaps. That means your coins could be held, flagged, or otherwise become unavailable to you, because you hand over custody and therefore trust to that swap provider. In practice it shouldn’t be an issue, especially if you set a fixed exchange rate.
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It really depends on your risk tolerance. As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t keep more coins in a hot wallet (e.g. like Cake Wallet) than you are comfortable losing.
For anything above that, use a dedicated hardware wallet (e.g. like Trezor).
Cupcake isn’t intended as a replacement for a hardware wallet, but rather as the next best thing for people who can not afford a dedicated hardware wallet.
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Gotcha, many thanks. I have looked and they arent that much money anyway really so noted. Cheers for your input.
How much are people comfortable keeping in their hot wallets “in theory”, i kniow we are all different.