Search for a private exchange and you'll type both terms: no-KYC and no-AML. Usually you mean one thing — swap crypto without giving up your identity. But the two point at different things, and knowing which is which tells you a lot about who's being straight with you.
KYC, plainly
KYC stands for Know Your Customer: collecting and checking who you are. An ID, a selfie, an address, sometimes a note on where your money came from. A no-KYC exchange gathers none of it. There's no identity to leak, subpoena or sell, because nobody asked for it in the first place.
AML, plainly
AML — Anti-Money-Laundering — is the wider set of rules KYC feeds into: monitoring transactions, screening against sanctions lists, and reporting anything that looks off. KYC is a tool; AML is the regime behind it. A service can collect almost nothing about you and still turn away a transaction it believes is illegal.
So where's the line
- No-KYC means we don't ask who you are. No account, no ID, no email.
- No-AML is a much bigger claim, and one no honest operator can really make. Sanctions and the law still apply to everyone.
- The version that's both real and useful is no-KYC with tight data minimisation: collect nothing you don't need.
What 0trace actually does
- No KYC: no account, no email, no identity collected.
- No IP checks and no logs, so there's nothing to hand over later.
- Orders auto-delete after 72 hours and the encrypted order chat after 24 — or you wipe either one yourself.
- Rates, fees and payouts are all worked out on our side, so you never have to trust a number your browser made up.
How to read a private exchange
- It settles from its own funds and doesn't sit on yours any longer than the swap needs.
- It says plainly what it stores, for how long, and when it's gone.
- It doesn't claim to be 100% anonymous or beyond the law. That's a marketing tell, not a feature.
- It shows a real, live rate you can check before you commit.
The part nobody likes to say
No serious exchange can promise no-AML in the literal sense. Sanctions exist, the law exists, and any operator can refuse a transaction. What a privacy-first exchange can promise is narrower and more honest: it doesn't collect your identity, it doesn't keep logs it doesn't need, and it doesn't quietly turn your swap into a profile. That's the difference worth paying attention to.
