I will never use or recommend a Bitcoin or Lightning wallet that requires my phone number.
Sadly Blink one of the most commonly used wallets in underdeveloped countries with the most vulnerable people bc of autharitarians ruling is doing this.
Discussion
Do they do it for regulatory compliance reasons, for "safety" reasons (like, account/password recovery), or maybe even as a way to monetize by selling the information?
I don’t know. I assume 1) and 2)
I talked to a guy from them at BTC Prague.
1) They are regulated under El Salvador law
2) The law requires and identifier, but does not specify what is shall be
3) Phone number for convince
4) Somehow you can create account just with an email (I think is somehow hidden under demo account
5) They will use the ID of the Android or something (probably works only on Android)
However, if you are on GrapheneOS they will block it, as this ID is changed every time cos' GrapheneOS does good job.
I tried many online SMS gates (even paid). None worked.
Maybe there is some, but I lost m interestet.
They simp for government, so they are irrelevant for me.
Would be easy to not hide email option. But as you say…just bc El Salvador favors BTC doesn’t mean user data is safe with them.
Don’t they have an option to use an email address instead of a phone number?
No. Tried to set it up one month ago.
That’s a bummer :/
You can register with a throwaway number, then replace it with an email and delete the number.
#nostr fixes this ..