Why do people always suggest paying with cryptocurrency? My understanding of it is that is certainly traceable. How is buying BTC with a credit card from one of these big players any better than just paying with a credit card? Can someone enlighten me? I must be missing a piece. Wouldn't cash bought gift cards be much better?
Because it is not a "low hanging fruit" meaning, yes given enough time and resources someone intent on tracing your cryptocurrency can eventually do it but it's not as easy or quick as tracing paypal and credit cards.
Many many MANY methods to buy with crypto and not be traced. That being said, tracing it is NOT easy unless you're extremely basic in your method of using it.
For them to put the efforts into tracking even one end user is highly unlikely. Where as a simple file sent to paypal can get a very detailed list of every user overnight.
That's something you should only worry about if you're American or eventually in some very developed European country... The rest of the world is just fine with PayPal, Western Union, bank transfer, whatever works for you and your provider
Becomes less traceable when you also mine your own crypto instead of buying it on exchange, there are also crypto currencies that are meant for hiding your real wallet (ETH, Monero), so you can buy it on exchange, move it to your wallet, obfuscate/create new wallet address, and send from there, you can repeat that many times to hide your activity.
Your provider gets caught and Paypal gets subpoenaed. There's all your info for them to have a field day with.
Who do they subpoena for info with crypto? No one, because smart providers set it up anonymously and there's no way to prove what payment was for what.
There's always some assclown who comes on here and says "Bitcoin is traceable"...yeah by the feds it probably is, but Nagrastar and Dish and those guys are looking for easy money, they're not deciphering a blockchain and then trying to prove what each transaction was for and who it came from and who it went to. If done properly that's a dead end search anyway because smart providers swap to privacy coins and then find a way to cash it out anonymously too. By contrast the guy who uses Paypal is one court order away from having his pants around his ankles and being bent over a barrel.