My understanding, and this may be wrong since I don’t actually have Monero, is it’s not since US customers are subject to KYC. While the transaction on the blockchain would be obfuscated, the Exchange as the sender/receiver would still have the withdraw and deposit addresses since they were one of the parties of the transaction.
Further transactions after withdrawing would be difficult to discern, but an exchange could be used to track an approximation of how much Monero you own.
A cash based ATM purchase would be more difficult to track since no KYC is involved.
Monero itself is not KYC, sorry if I worded that poorly above.
The transactions to and from Kraken can definitely be tracked since they would have a record of the actual wallet address you sent your funds to. As for things that happen after that money hits your wallet - you’re right they wouldn’t be able to track it.
I checked the Monero subreddit just to see if my understanding of it tracked with what people who actually own it say and it looks like they agree that transferring from a KYC exchange does allow tracking for transactions coming out or into the exchange.
I also didn't say you transfer directly into Kraken. Instead, you would use at least 1 or 2 other wallets before transferring into Kraken, because that bypasses their scanning.
Kraken is still cheaper while doing that than paying a 10% fee for an ATM.
have not used kraken, but the convenience i am talking about is that someone who has never used any cryptocurrency and does not hold any, can simply walk in there with cash and have monero a minute later, ready to use. but it is true that for many people that convenience is not worth a whole 10%, especially if they somewhat know what they are doing.
You still need to create a wallet, key, etc. and that is not easy to do for beginners without an exchange like Kraken. Most DNMs use temporary addresses so it's not a good idea to try to transfer directly from a bitcon ATM to a DNM.
Further transactions after withdrawing would be difficult to discern, but an exchange could be used to track an approximation of how much Monero you own.
A cash based ATM purchase would be more difficult to track since no KYC is involved.