this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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Privacy

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On P2P payments from their FAQ: "While the payment appears to be directly between wallets, technically the operation is intermediated by the payment service provider which will typically be legally required to identify the recipient of the funds before allowing the transaction to complete."

How about, no? How about me paying €50 to my friend for fixing my bike doesn’t need to be intermediated, KYCed, and blocked if they don't approve of it or know who the recipient is? How about it’s none of the government’s business how I split the bill at dinner with friends? This level of surveillance is madness, especially coming from an app that touts "privacy" as a feature.

GNU Taler is a trojan horse to enable CBDC adoption. They are the friendly face to an absolutely terrifying level of government control in our lives funded by the same government that tries every year to implement chat control. Imagine your least favourite political party gaining power. Now imagine they can see and control every transaction you make. No thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

You people realize that most crypto is even less private? Every transaction ever can be viewed by everyone, forever, by design.

Sure, a crypto wallet might not have your name on it when created, but good luck buying or selling any without giving away your identity.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Lemmy is ease for glowies to astroturf.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

You people realize that most crypto is even less private? Every transaction ever can be viewed by everyone, forever, by design.

There's some truth to this but it's also not really the case.

  • Each address is pseudononymous even in original Bitcoin.
  • Bitcoin lightning transactions are completely opaque to the network, they are never on-chain. At this point, there are vastly more transactions on lightning than on-chain. They confirm instantly and are known only to your node, the receiver's wallet, and intermediary nodes (if any). Lightning inherits security from the main chain while giving you sub-second transaction confirmation times.
  • Monero exists, coinjoin (Bitcoin) exist, changing addresses and having multiple wallets exists, liquidity swaps exist. The chain analysis game is getting harder and more complex every year.
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

good luck

except there are many sites dedicated to doing exactly that. you can send cash in the mail, giftcards, exchange via other cryptocurrencies, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Yes. But the draw is that it is still leagues easier use privately than the traditional banking system. With cryptocurrency, you "only" need proper understanding of OPSEC. With banking system - you also need to break the law somewhere in the KYC process.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, most crypto are totally useless, for privacy or anything else other than lottery and heating the home. But why are those discussed any further than just telling not to use them?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cryptocurrency/

Because everything in life has a trade-off, and talking about the utility, and the costs, is a reasonable thing to do. And yes there are ways to enable greater levels of privacy online using cryptocurrency then any other method available to us. So it is worth a discussion sometimes