How do you define it? I used to, if you count p2p vexing for cash.
Also buying flight tickets and hotels abroad is hard (or expensive) with cash/bitcoin.
Discussion
Yes i count p2p into that. I agree it is still challenging in some cases but doable.
In reality I had to turn over a quite a lot of cash.
Instead lliving on Bitcoin I would call it - living without bank account and credit card.
But it was not entirely true either in my case. I always have them as backup, and sad to say, they saved my ass couple of times (abroad).
I would say if you want to live on Bitcoin locally, you find your dealers for p2p and you know shops around that accepts Bitcoin (or better you orange pill them) then it works.
To travel on Bitcoin, that's completely different story and I think it's possible but unreasonably expensive.
Services that sells flights and acomodation for Bitcoin have really hight premium.
I agree that many services don't offer bitcoin payments. It is doable but it requires more time and energy from our side. For example it is possible to charge virtual credit card with BTC, the service will convert it in FIAT and pay with FIAT. But I agree it is not one click purchase.
Virtual Credit cards (prepaid) never actually worked for me. Many vendors simply reject them.
I always ended up with $25 sucked at some prepaid card that did not bought me what I wanting. Then I had to figure out how to spend it.
Once I tried to dump it on some charity and the payment processor rejected that.
I wrote a short note about it here:
great list. You are solving same issues like me. I will drop some comments on your list here later on. We got similar conclusions. I will share some data i have experience with on each point. 👍🏽
Thanks! I am happy for any ideas, tips and feedback.
I am accepting pull requests I to my knowledge-base.😉
Some thoughts on your list from my side:
2) Signal - can be registered to anon sim a later you don't have to use it, it's just first reg. I think they use twillio. It is workable.
Another option is Sessions app. No number required. Only downside is network effect.
3)There's AppFlowy. You can run it locally. Problem is that UI is not good.
5) Passwords: What about to use something like open source password manager + TOTP 2FA on second device? You don't rely only on Master password.
7) Number: Try keepgo.com or silent.link . Hushed is ok, but sometimes it might not work. Those sms4sats work pretty good for sms verifications.
8) Phone: Banana phone with wallace toolbox can change IMEI and with anon SIM it is a solution.
9) That is true, works for some time and than it discontinued. Unfortunately that is the truth.
10) Paying cash and smaller accommodation solve this problem. Or to have another ID card. (more various residencies)
11) That is pain and cancer, agree. But simplelogin is solving it.
2) If I loose the phone, can I recover my Signal account by using different number? I expect no. Then I loose that account and I have to create new one.
This is usable for some use cases, but not for those when I need identity and build network & reputation.
Not sure, but i guess you are right. High probaboyiu need to have the number to recover.
3) Appflowy is on my list, but last time when I tried it was not working and crashing. I thinks its still under heavy development, but true it's promising.
Its working for me, just still clunky.
5) Here it's about scaling what I already have.
I have Trezor, backuped with great care and not-small investment (Shamir, stamped on stainless steel, very carefully distributed to match my threat model)
It is ideal device to use as the universal key.
I can do some other solution, I can buy Ubikey or something. But it just adds complexity and cost to achieve what I already have with Trezor.
Trezor is perfect match for this usecase.
Agree! Trezor ia great, especially shamir secret sharing in combination with passphrase
8) I think I have banana phone mentioned there. Will it serve as hotspot for my modern device? Will it be up to speed?
I need anonymous phone but also encrypted communication and luxury of modern huge phone.
Ok, in that case you need to get anon sim and buy anon phone (new or used) with cash or crypto. Delivered to pick-up place.
10) It's tricky. It's a social engineering problem I think and if you want to travel with family it gets even more complicated.
Not sure about some lest tyrannical countries but I think most hotels will require ID or Passport. Maybe if you can have some fake Uganda ID, that can work.
But then, they will report you to the police. If police thinks it's suspicious they can come and then the hide-and-seek game is over, they won.
Depends what is your threat model. I can tell you it is doable and you can protect your privacy.
11) depends on your thread model.
Simple login can be quite honeypot. Thay can cluster you.
- simplelogin is opensource
- with strong password and 2FA it seems ok for most cases.