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?
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.
I bought crypto and still own it, but over time I have come to the opinion that until stores and malls accept crypto, they will never grow betond being a commodity like gold. This is the highest price I’ve ever seen gold. That has me concerned of how volatile people’s finances are. The cost of living was a huge amount cheaper when gold was 65 to 70% cheaper than now.
If bitcoin ever hits $400,000, I see implosion and collapse being imminent. Crypto will never be worthlesss, at least crypto that casual observers have heard of before, but there’s no huge profit to be made from it without engaging in financial criminal activity.
So if you want to get into crypto, do definitely protect your identity at all cost before purchasing whichever currency, but also know for what principal you got it to it. If it is to get wealthy, you wasted your money. If it’s to hold on to something of value that you can trade for if economy falls off, then that could prove to be a wise decision in the future.
There’s more I could say, this might already be blah blah blah, but I hope that you understand my overall premise. I genuinelly don’t now why individual stores don’t accept crypto and then sell it almost in real time. If crypto stablized, a few people would take their pay in crypto instead of bank deposit, and just that would take money away from the elite global class if staff got paid in crypto to do their shopping.