What are the options for increased privacy in how you pay for things where you live?
Cash is the obvious answer, but what about buying stuff online?
UK here. Thinking of ditching cards/contactless for good old cash. No idea about online payments - not doing anything illegal so might persevere with cards for now. Zero experience with crypto.
IME crypto is largely useless as a means of payment, not just in the real world but also online. Literally nothing I have ever bought online could be paid with crypto, no stores that sell useful tangible things takes them, be it hardware (kitchen, computer, whatever…), groceries, things for hobby projects. There’s just nowhere to spend it.
We had different experience I guess. I have bought both online services using Monero and Bitcoin such as VPS, email, aliases, art, PC components, bedsheets, food, drinks, clothes
VPS, email and aliases have no use in real daily life outside of small niche hobbies and is a poor indicator of how useful cryptonis as currency.
I’m intrigued about PC hardware, bedsheets, food and drink directly with crypto from a store, because I have never seen that.
I pay for my VPN with Monero, I pay my mobile carrier (VoIP + data eSIM) with Monero, and the last time I travelled internationally I also got a data eSIM for that with Monero. Every so often I need to get through a Google “give us a phone number” prompt, and the one-time SMS OTP service I use is also paid with Monero. There’s also stores where you can buy gift cards for real-world things (Amazon etc.) with Monero.
I guess that’s highly location dependant, we don’t have amazon in my country. Even if we did I’d rather use my credit card than shop with them though…
That’s fair, if Amazon gets your real name and address anyways, the privacy protection of paying with Monero isn’t as big of a deal.
which VoIP do you use? as for the one time sms, is it smspool?
Yep, smspool. For VoIP it’s JMP.Chat locally, and. silent.link when I travel (data only).