Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Crypto (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 day ago

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.