Crypto
Crypto
How viable is crypto as a private medium exchange in the modern world?
I see the value of using cryptocurrencies as a form of digital cash (from both a personal privacy point of view and a broader political/economic point of view) but am also put off by a) all the scamming and speculation and moreover b) the friction and privacy tradeoffs involved in getting any of it.
One of the obvious problems is that not many sellers accept it as payment. I can accept that. But AFAICT, in order to pay those that do, I must either do the legwork of conducting a peer-to-peer exchange of fiat currency for crypto (PITA) or use an exchange, which will have records of my personal identity. I'm aware that I could launder exchange-bought crypto to obfuscate my ownership of it but that is also a PITA. I suppose I could also mine coins but that has the most friction of all options and is a poor use of electricity production in my view.
Is there a solution that I'm not aware of, where I can buy (or indeed sell) crypto easily and privately?
It's increasingly harder to exchange for fiat anonymously, especially when you consider XMR or other privacy coins. Once the people in charge of money realized they were a bit subverted, you got the huge crackdown.
I still use it for various things. Buy LTC from a legit licensed exchange. Move it around a bit. Change to XMR through an exchange that doesn't care. Maybe move it around some more. It's a giant pain, but I don't know a better way. This method isn't perfect, more of a balance of risk, but it's better than just handing your entire entity over for a simple transaction.
Crypto is a ledger making it inherently bad for privacy. It doesn't have any real value, its just believe that holds its value (can't be eaten or be used to create anything). Its really bad for the climate and wastes resources like crazy. Its not a better payment system and its unregulated, meaning you can get scammed and nobody can reverse the damage. Just why do people want it to be a thing, the issues are so many and solution few.
Because governments can’t remove it from you, because the value is universal and bypasses the flawed banking system, allowing for really low fees for money exchange internationally.
Crypto is pseudonymous and anonymous if you know how to hide your traces. You’re forgetting about privacy coins.
And the non-reversal aspect is also nice for vendors. You don’t know how much abuse some fields have.
PoS coins have no climate impact… etc
What you do is you just allocate an amount per month that you use to buy Monero with. And you start using it as an actual currency. When you use it, you replace it, etc. If you wanted to, you could also earn it by selling goods or services for it, such as on https://xmrbazaar.com/
What you do is you just allocate an amount per month that you use to buy Monero with.
and where do you buy it? through a KYC exchange?
One of the very few KYC exchanges that has Monero is Kraken and I really don't expect that to last all that long so you either have to buy something like a stablecoin on an exchange and then do an instant swap from that to Monero or you can just buy Monero directly with Fiat on https://retoswap.com/. That's a software that you download to your computer that lets you exchange in a decentralized manner between Fiat and Monero.
Cash is probably more private over crypto
Monero and Tornado.Cash are probably the easiest ways of doing this
My "easy" solution for b) :
- Buy XMR from wherever you want (even KYC exchanges if you want and can)
- (if you’re already on a CEX and don’t want to bother, withdraw USDT/USDC/LTC/BCH… any crypto with not insane withdrawal fees and which is fairly popular, and then exchange it on a non-KYC exchange for XMR)
- Exchange your XMR at a non-KYC (or non systematical) exchange for your desired traceable cryptocurrency.
I can recommend https://trocador.app/ - nice exchange aggregator that doesn’t require you to log into the exchange's website, and that displays the level of privacy of each exchange.
By using this method, you always have non-ML non-KYC crypto that can be used to buy anything
For additional (and true) privacy, please churn the XMR while you have it. If you know, you know, but that’s a power user move.
The stock market as well
Why are you posting this? Unrelated to the discussion