KYCNOT.ME FAQ
Find NON-KYC exchanges and services to use and spend your crypto anonymously.
Why this
Cryptocurrencies are meant to make a change on the way we pay and exchange goods. They are made to untie the dependency between the users (customers) and the centralized entities that are in control (law enforced) of our economy (e.g. Banks and Governments).
KYC and AML enforcing exchanges are the most common nowadays, they act exactly like a bank when using their wallets (most newbies or “traders” do so). You (usually) don't own any private key, so the funds aren't yours, they own your keys. More precisely, they make you a promise that you own a part of THEIR holdings. They also require you to identify yourself in order to operate there (e.g. photo of your ID). All of this together goes against the most valuable benefits of cryptocurrencies.
With KYCNOT.ME I want to make it easier for people to find trustworthy ways to buy, exchange, trade and use cryptos without needing to identify themselves, and preserving the decentralized and self-governed essence of Cryptocurrencies.
What is KYC
KYC stands for "Know Your Customer", a process designed to protect financial institutions against fraud, corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing. Or at least this is what they want you to believe.
The truth is that KYC is a threat to our freedom. KYC is a direct attack on our privacy and puts us in disadvantage against the governments. True criminals don't care about KYC policies. True criminals know perfectly how to avoid such policies.
In fact, they normally use the FIAT system and don't even need to use cryptocurrencies. Banks are the biggest money launders, the HSBC scandal, Nordea or Swedbank are just some examples.
KYC only affects small individuals like you and me. It is an annoying procedure that obligates you to give your personal information to a third party in order to buy, use or unlock your funds. We should start boycotting such companies.
Why only Bitcoin and Monero
Bitcoin: it is the most well-known cryptocurrency. It's widespread and has the biggest market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies.
Monero: if digital cash was to exist, it should be like Monero. Fungible, private by design, fast and pretty low fees. Also, one of the oldest cryptocurrencies.
No other currencies will be added. Most sites listed here also accept other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum or Litecoin.
Disclaimer
As an individual I can't guarantee that any of the listed services changes their terms and conditions at some point. If you find that one of the listed services is requiring KYC, please contact me.
Services that appear as verified have been tested personally by me. This is a better guarantee than nothing, but still there could be cases where the service turns into a scam in a future after my validation, or they may disappear. This is why I can't give any strong guarantee on any of the listed services. Please, always make your own research, kycnot.me is a list of services without guarantee.
How is KYCNOT.ME funded?
I am an individual and I fund this service myself. I pay for the domain, the server, and I use my time to maintain it. Bribes or money from anyone are not and will never be accepted in exchange for being listed or for a good score. If you want to contribute, do it because you find this site useful. You can donate, contribute or use referral links.
Why X is not listed?
There may be many answers to this question. For now, I'm alone with this project and my time is limited and before adding an Exchange/Merchant/Service I need to make some investigation in order to be sure that it compiles with the KYCNOT.ME requirements.
If you think a service can fit the KYCNOT.me requirements, please fill the request form and send it to me. I will review the request as soon as I can.
If it was already suggested, maybe I haven't had the time to investigate on it. If you're patient, I promise I will be investigating all the suggestions I receive. Also, I always answer any emails sooner or later.
JavaScript and the project
This site does not use JavaScript at all for the core functionalities. It does use Javascript from remark42 (open source project), which enables comments. If Javascript is disabled, you will not see comments but all the site is still usable perfectly.
I want to keep it simple for anyone to use, and there are some people who don't want to run JavaScript in their browsers.
Open Source and the project
Although it's not a very big project, I really believe in Open Source. I want people to be able to contribute with it, request features, make suggestions and I want as well to interact with them.
Trackers and the project
KYCNOT.me does not have trackers and never will. It does not make any third party connections from the frontend. No user data of any kind is collected. A "no-referrer" policy is enforced, so no site will know that you came from kycnot.me.
About referral links
Some websites provide referral links. You will see my referral links in a separate link that warns itself. You can choose to use the clean link or my referral, it's up to you.
Using the referral link you can help this page a little bit. But feel free to choose whatever you prefer. If you want full anonyimity (i.e. you don't want to disclose where you come from), don't use them!
About me
I think privacy is a basic human right, so I build, (try to) teach and fight in favor of privacy. Also, I truly believe in Open Source technologies, so everything I do is Open Source.
In this section below, you will find a list with all my projects. I hope you find some of them useful!
I am not a professional web developer, so you may find some things can be improved. If so, don't hesitate creating a Pull Request or notifying me!
KYCNOT.me and Social Networks
My social accounts are: on any platform other than u/hoiru on Reddit, @kycnot on Twitter and pluja on Github and Codeberg.
- Github/Codeberg: pluja - Active.
- Mastodon: [email protected] - Low activity.
- Reddit: u/hoiru - Not very active, but I often make official announcements there.
- Dread: u/pluja - Almost no activity.
- Twitter: @kycnot - Inactive.
I only have a Dread account by the name of u/pluja. I have become aware that someone is impersonating me. Please ignore any other accounts claiming they are me or kycnot.me. This is not a team, it is only a single individual running this.
PGP and signed messages
As I have been suggested, and seeing that there is risk of impersonation, I decided to share a public key that I will use to publish signed messages if needed.
You can find my public key in this link.
If you don't know how to use PGP, you can easily verify any signed messages in this site
You can also use this key to send me an encrypted email if you want, but I prefer using SimpleX Chat for End-To-End Encrypted messages (see contact section below).
Listing request
You can see a full overview of the pending requests here.
- Complete the request form and copy the link that it will genreate.
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Copy the request example body and modify to fit your needs. Please make sure you add the link generated in step 1.
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Send the request mail to:
request [a t] kycnot [d o t] me
Delisting request
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Copy the request example body and modify to fit your needs.
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Send the request mail to:
request [a t] kycnot [d o t] me
Site metrics
KYC Levels
- Level 0: No KYC. The exchange ToS do not mention that it will ever request the user for a KYC verification.
- Level 1: KYC is rare. The platform does not mention KYC/AML procedures as such, but the service has the right to share acquired data with representatives of the authorities and block funds or reject transactions.
- Level 2: The exchange may request KYC. Although KYC is not mandatory, the exchange reserves the right to require KYC for a certain user at a certain moment and may block funds. May be that a transaction is detected as suspicious or any other reason.
- Level 3: KYC is mandatory in order to use some features. Also, a non-KYCed user can be asked to verify their identity at any time or any moment for any reason.
Scores
The information about the exchange is used to compute a score. The higher the score, the more KYCNOT-friendly is the exchange.
You can check this url for a disclosure of where the points come from for each exchange.
The scoring system was changed as of August 2022. It had been bringing me many headaches as many people were contacting me about a score being "too high" or "too low" for certain exchanges.
I was even accused of inflating the scores for some exchanges as if I was accepting bribes or something, which is absolutely false.
The scores are now limited to integer numbers. The computation of scores is much simpler and can bee seen here.
Color Green equals a "good" score [10 to 7], Yellow is medium [5 to 6] and Red is a bad score [0 to 4].
If you think that scores could be calculated differently or that the current system can somehow be improved, please contact me.
About the order
The exchanges are sorted in a decreasing order by score. For exchanges that share the same score (tie), the order is random every time within that score range.
Services, also appear in random order every time.
Support
I maintain and host a variety of services and projects, all focusing on privacy. You can check them out below!
Donations are also a huge help, and also, along with messages, a way of knowing people like and enjoy what I do as there aren't (and never will be) analytics on the site.
My projects
I host and maintain several privacy-related open-source projects:
- Awesome Privacy - Curated list of privacy-respecting alternatives to privacy-harmful software.
- kycnot.me - Find the best anonymous and KYC-free exchanges and services accepting Bitcoin and Monero.
- iseeyour.cash - Search and see Twitter users' cryptocurrency addresses and balance. Currently under maintenance.
- Web Whisper - Transcribe any audio to text.
- Feetter - Manage your Nitter feeds.
- r3d.red - Public instances for some services like Nitter, Teddit, Microbin, Feetter and Nostr.
EMAIL:
Emails sent from Proton Mail will be end-to-end encrypted as I'm using ProtonMail as the mail provider for kycnot.me.
contact kycnot [ dot ] me
XMPP (with OMEMO):
[email protected]
Threema ID
9393Z4MP
Session ID
I don't get push notifications for Session. Replies may be delayed.
0579a1b1d2692b4f0a19bd5d766400f9c7a076f46a47ae33f90742da3366a25168
