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.
Monero and Tornado.Cash are probably the easiest ways of doing this
Cash is probably more private over crypto
To correct some oversimplifications in this thread, let me just summarise some facts:
Crypto is exactly as worthless as money.
Not all crypto is bad for the climate, see for example Etherium and Solana.
Crypto has legitimate uses, especially as a replacement for traditional bank transactions, which to remind everyone, are basically made up numbers and ‘trust me bro’-s. And I will explicitly include smart contracts and NFTs here, just to annoy people who don’t get them.
Not all crypto is private. In fact, it was designed to be the opposite, hence most crypto isn’t private at all.
While not all crypto is private, even less ways to spend or exchange crypto are private. A simple and also very private thing is cash.
Not all crypto is private. In fact, it was designed to be the opposite, hence most crypto isn’t private at all.
