Should I ditch my old wallet after setting up a new Electrs server?

So I set up an Electrs server and linked my wallet to it. I did this mainly to keep my transactions private, but now I'm wondering if sticking with my old wallet makes that effort pointless. Should I consider creating a brand new wallet that’s tied to the server right from the beginning? What about moving my funds to this new wallet, would that transfer still be traceable? I really need some advice on this… should I go for a new wallet for better privacy, or can I still use my old one?

This is not a question that can be answered simply with a yes or no. The answer is depends. What do you want to do and from who are you trying to hide? Node operators, transaction tracking, government and other observers? If there is no strong reasons for keeping the old wallet, I regularly recommend swapping spending wallets. Having a very old wallet may feel nice for vanity's sake but it is a privacy nightmare. If your machine ever gets compromised in any way, a very long history about you will be exposed. Of course, that is the basic of how a blockchain works. You will see this transaction on the explorer. Address 1 or multiple addresses (old wallet) -> Address 2 (new wallet). As I said it really depends on who you are trying to hide from. Running your own Electrum server provides you with the opportunity of keeping your transactions separate and private, not a guarantee! You need to use Coin Control carefully in a privacy preserving way. If you don't all I need to know is 1 address from you and I can just go to https://blockstream.info/ to find the others out.

I don't think it's pointless to have your own Electrum server; for me, that's a huge improvement for your privacy. Sending your BTC from an old wallet to a new wallet can improve privacy. However, the third-party server you previously connected to knows your IP and addresses and possible transaction history. For on-chain privacy, your wallet has transaction history. That history is a permanent record on the blockchain. In the past leaks, if you ever used that wallet with a public server, your wallet's entire history is already linked with your IP. Chain analysis could easily spot this; if you just transfer your funds from an old wallet to a new wallet, it's directly linked with your wallet. Meaning even if you transfer your funds to your new wallet with your own server, they can still be able to track you. You can improve the privacy of your wallet and your own server by using a Tor proxy to hide your IP, but it doesn't mean you've solved your past leaks. For complete privacy I might sell BTC and then use those funds to buy BTC on a non-KYC P2P exchange like Bisq and transfer them into this setup on my own server with a Tor proxy.

Interesting. This is exactly what I was wondering, thanks for your reply. Do I have this right: to ensure actual privacy you really have to acquire new bitcoins from a non-kyc and send to a new wallet connected to your own server? Old bitcoins cannot not have a papertrail, its built into its very foundation.

As Satofan44 asked, and as I like to ask: it depends on who you're hiding from. Even non-KYC exchanges can store (and share) transactions.

I would just like it so my wallet cannot be tied to me in anyway

So maximum paranoia. I like it! That means you're hiding the wallet from your spouse, kids, parents, friends, government, other governments, exchanges, chain analysis companies, burglars, node operators, ISP and VPN providers and anyone you ever did a transaction with in the past. You're going to need Tor, a fully encrypted system, no unencrypted backups, closed curtains, coin control, and switching back and forth to privacy coins several times with different amounts on different dates. And you'll never be able to make a transaction in the future, as that would tie the wallet to you again. May I recommend a more pragmatic approach? Determine your biggest risk factor, and start by mitigating that.

But this involves more than just operating an own Electrum server. I have and use also my own Electrum server (Fulcrum) for multiple reasons. high priority: I don't want other Electrum servers to get to know all the addresses my SPV wallet currently uses. An Electrum style wallet has to ask the Electrum server to provide the history of all addresses currently in use in the wallet. It also has to subscribe for new transactions to every used address in the wallet. This is why an Electrum server can easily aggregate and attribute a bunch of address to a single wallet. It can't yet attribute these details to a certain person because of pseudo-anonymity of public addresses.high priority: I'm too lazy to change my IP address or Tor exit node when I change to another wallet. If I keep my IP address and use multiple Electrum wallets then a foreign Electrum server could aggregate those to possibly a single entity (though, not a strong conclusion, because multiple enities can be behind a single (NAT) IP address).medium priority: I can tweak parameters of my Electrum server myself to accomodate for queries when I try to do some blockchain forensics or am simply curious what happens on the blockchain. Hate to observe the responce "Error: address history too large..." or similar.low priority: I like to tinker and experience crypto technology myself (local Lightning node, local mempool.space and more local stuff). As I said and LoyceV mentioned, to detach your identity from your public addresses involves a lot more care and privacy consciousness. E.g. if you want to create a new ("more private") wallet, you shouldn't consolidate and send all your coins in one transaction to your new wallet destination address. This would expose that all UTXOs were controlled by a single entity which very likely is also the owner of the destination address when there's only one transaction output and no change output. It's not strong evidence for a single enitity but pretty strong heuristics.