How to move your Crypto from Coinbase into an anonymous wallet
In the world of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has gained immense popularity and value. However, privacy and security remain major concerns for Bitcoin users. Creating an anonymous Bitcoin wallet allows you to maintain confidentiality and protect your funds from prying eyes. If you are reading this article, you are looking to:
- control & manage your crypto, instead of letting someone else control it for you?
- spread out your funds, in case one of your accounts gets hacked?
- move some of your money out of a centralized exchange in order to have more anonymity?
Then you might want to move your crypto to a more anonymous wallet, such as Metamask, Rabby, or another anonymous wallet.
This may be from a crypto exchange (Coinbase, Gemini, etc.) to a wallet that you own.
In this article, we will look at how to move your crypto out of Coinbase & into your own anonymous wallet.
Where is your money now?
In order to get your funds moved to another wallet, you will need to start this transaction from the wallet that currently contains the funds you are wanting to move.
This begins the journey for your tokens, going from one wallet to another wallet.
In this case, we will use Coinbase as an example, since we have used it in the past. Your originating wallet may be different, which will mean the steps outlined in this article may also be different.
In the steps, below we will follow 96.16 USDC as it makes its way into one of my anonymous wallets. (We will use 96.16 USDC because that is how much $100 USD buys after Coinbase fees.)
Let’s get started!
Gathering information
You will need the following information before you are able to move your funds.
- The receiving wallet blockchain address, is usually something like 0x2052ec793df2b8d7984021edd6027xxxxxxxxxxx (“x” equals alphanumeric characters). This is the wallet address that you will be sending your tokens to.
- The sending wallet blockchain address is usually formatted very similarly to the receiving wallet address. This is where your tokens are currently being held.
- The blockchain where your funds are currently located. This may be a little tricky because some tokens can be on more than one blockchain. USDC can be on several, most commonly on the ETH blockchain & BSC blockchain. Be sure that you know which blockchain it is currently on & which blockchain you are sending it to. Sending it to the wrong blockchain can cause you to lose your funds.
Once you have this information then you are ready to start moving your tokens.
How to move tokens from Coinbase to an anonymous wallet
As stated above, your steps may be different than these, if you are using something else besides Coinbase.
Your mileage may vary…
Here are the steps used in moving USDC from Coinbase into an anonymous wallet. (These are the steps while using a web browser. The mobile app will be very similar.)
- Click on the send button & choose the token that you would like to send.
- Type the amount that you are trying to send. In this case, it will be 96.16 USDC.
- Paste the receiving wallet’s address into the “to” field. (I usually copy it from my receiving wallet & then paste it into Coinbase.)
- Hit the continue button. This should take you to a summary screen, showing different aspects of this transaction.
- Make sure that the correct network is shown. In this case we will be sending the USDC to my wallet on the Polygon network. (I do have the option of sending to other networks, such as ETH. This would be faster but cost more in gas.)
- Once you are sure everything is correct then click the send button.
- Coinbase will then send you a verification notification, which will probably make you open the Coinbase app & accept the transaction.
- Once you submit & accept this transaction, you can follow its progress by clicking on the view transaction button. This will show the progress this transaction has had on its journey to the other wallet.
- Wait a few minutes, then check the receiving wallet to see if it has arrived. (There is also a link that you can click to view its progress in the blockchain explorer.)
- After this transaction has been verified several times, it should appear in the wallet you sent it. If it doesn’t appear after several minutes then there may have been a delay of sorts. (This happened to me recently. It took a few days for the transaction to finish.)
Congratulations!
You have just moved your crypto from one wallet to another!!!
If you run into any trouble with this transaction then contact Coinbase support for more assistance.
Other Tips & Suggestions
After doing several of these transactions myself, I have a couple of suggestions or tips.
- Make sure to double-check the sending & receiving wallet addresses. If you send your tokens to the wrong address then you may not be able to get them back. They may be in someone else’s wallet instead of yours. So check them again before hitting the send button.
- Make sure to double-check what blockchain your token is on. You will need to be able to check for them on that same blockchain, in your receiving wallet. If you send them to the wrong blockchain then they may be lost forever. Sometimes, blockchain technology is not very forgiving of mistakes.
In the woodworking world, they say “Measure twice cut once.” It’s the same in the Crypto Defi world.
Double-check before you accept, or you might regret it.
In Conclusion
Sometimes, you will need to move tokens from a centralized wallet to an anonymous wallet.
- You may want to self-manage your crypto.
- You may want to diversify in case an account gets hacked.
- You may want to move the money around for some other reason.
In any case, knowing how to move to an anonymous wallet can help you in a lot of different ways. Also, having another account somewhere like on Robinhood isn’t a bad thing either.
Knowing how to do this is a basic skill needed in today’s crypto world.
