why kycnot.me?

Cryptocurrencies were created to revolutionize the way we pay for goods and services, aiming to eliminate reliance on centralized entities such as banks and governments that control our economy.

Exchanges that enforce KYC (Know Your Customer) operate similarly to traditional banks. Users are required to provide identification, such as a photo of their ID, to use these exchanges. Moreover, most of these exchanges are centralized, meaning that users do not own their keys. In short, this implies that the cryptocurrencies belong to the exchange and not the user. These requirements go against the decentralized and self-governed nature of cryptocurrencies.

With KYCNOT.ME, I hope to provide people with trustworthy alternatives for buying, exchanging, trading, and using cryptocurrencies without having to disclose their identity, preserving the original essence of cryptocurrencies.

what's KYC?

other acronyms of interest

why only Bitcoin and Monero?

Bitcoin: it's the initial spark of the decentralized money. A solid project with a strong community. It is the most well-known and widespread cryptocurrency.

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 around with a very active community.

No other currencies will be added. Most sites listed here also accept other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum or Litecoin.

listings

request

You can request a new listing by visiting the Request page. The request form requires javascript to avoid spam. Read more about the PoW captcha in this section..

listing process

The listing process is usually slow. I first need to review the service, read online reviews, gather evidence and history of good reviews / opinions, test it myself (i can't always do this), read the terms of service, privacy policy, etc...

I do this on my own free time, so I'm slow at it. If you feel like a pending service deserves to be listed, you can contact me and I will try to speed up the review process.

what is an attribute?

An attribute is a feature that a service has. An attribute can be either good, a warning, bad or informational. Attributes are not limited, the list of attributes will grow if needed, you can see a full list of the attributes available on the Attributes page.

You can click on any point to see a detailed description of what it means. The point page also shows all the listings that have that point. This is also a useful way to find listings that have a specific feature.

search

Filtering services in kycnot.me is very easy. In the main page, you will see 3 possible filters:

kyc Levels

KYCnot.me has a KYC level system. These levels allow you to quickly identify the kind of KYC practices a service may have. There are 4 levels going from 0 to 3. The higher the level, the more invasive the KYC practices are.

scoring

Each listing has a score that is calculated based on the attributes that it has. The score does not reflect how good an exchange is overall, but it seeks to give a score in relation to its KYC practices. An exchange could have an awful UI/UX, but if it is very NO-KYC friendly, it will still get a high score.

The scoring algorithm is open source, pull requests to improve it are welcome. It runs once every hour, meaning scores cannot be manually modified since they will be recalculated by the algorithm hourly. You can visit a service's score breakdown to see how it is calculated.

order

The listings are sorted in a decreasing order by score. For listings that share the same score (tie), the order is random every time within that score range.

pending

You can find the list of services that have been requested and are pending for approval here: /pending

verification

You will see that some services show a blue badge with a tick. This means that the service has been tested personally by me.

To check the service, I make a trade on the site, or test the service manually. With this, I can verify that the service does not perform KYC practices on regular basis, and that it is not a scam, at least at the time of the verification.

These checks are done randomly and without prior notice to the service. For this reason, and as the list is in constant growth, not all services have been verified yet and it takes me some time to verify them.

A verified service does not mean that the service is safe to use blindly, it just means that at the time of the verification, the service was not performing KYC practices on regular basis, and that it was not a scam. It is still recommended to do your own research before using any service, since I can't test all the services frequently enough.

terms of service auto-reviews

KYCnot.me features an AI-powered tool that automatically reviews Terms of Service (ToS) for all the different services. It breaks down the ToS content, highlights the main points, and translates them into easy-to-understand language, aiming to simplify the comprehension of any service's ToS.

For this, I am using OpenAI's GPT4-turbo model, which proved to be the most reliable and provides the best results.

Important note: The automated tool generally delivers reliable and solid results. But it might flag false positives or irrelevant lines, if you find something's off, please contact me.

support this project

If you like this project, or any of my other projects, you can support me through these methods:

contact

Due to past misuse and difficulties in managing, I've decided to remove direct instant messaging/email contacts. If you have any queries or concerns, connect with me on any of the listed social media platforms below.

For confidential communication, please reach out via the specified platforms and I can provide my email, matrix, xmpp, threema or a SimpleX link.

(matrix) comments

Each service has a dedicated comments section. The comments are suppored by Matrix, an open network for secure, decentralised communication, thanks to Cactus.

To comment on a service's page, you just need a Matrix account. This method gives users full control over who hosts their data. Users can log in using any Matrix server they choose.

You can read and post comments in your browser, or continue the conversation using any other Matrix client. Comment sections are accesible from any homeserver on the Matrix network.

The source code for the web client is LGPLv3 licensed, and the backend service is AGPLv3 licensed.

transparency

In order to increase trust from visitors, KYCNOT.me strives to be as transparent as possible. Here are some of the ways in which I try to achieve this:

privacy

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. Tor and I2P sites are available (check the footer).

javascript

KYCNOT.me does not require Javascript. Everything is rendered server-side. You can use KYCNOT.me with Javascript disabled.

Only things that do require JavaScript to be enabled are:

api

KYCnot.me offers a public API to get its data.

If you make use of the API data, you should mention kycnot.me as the source of the data.

example: /api/v1/service/localmonero

example 2: /api/v1/service/localmonero.co

rate limit: 5req/min (with bursts of 5)

referrals

Referrals help me cover the site and maintenance costs. The default website link is the referral, if there is any. But there's always a referral-free option, that is shown with a icon. Feel free to choose.

disclaimer

This website does not provide any not financial advice. Always do your own research before using any service. This site is for informational purposes only. I'm not responsible for any loss of funds or any other damage that may occur by using any of the services listed here. Use at your own risk.