Look for reputable companies to deal with and keep an eye out for phishing links. As already stated, most Bitcoin exchanges require some kind of verification these days in order to prevent money —laundering and fraud transactions. As such, if you can pay with bitcoin, and you can trust the merchant not to keep any records of PII, the purchase can be anonymous. Compared to some other platforms on this list, the speed of buying Bitcoins online on Paxful is slightly slower. They provide a Letter of Guarantee for every transaction.