so basically what you are saying is if the foreign pleb street merchant doesn't know what they are doing or how to setup inbound liquidity channels, you can't transact in Bitcoin with them. Got it.

Don't even mention WOS to them to facilitate their journey!

Were you using self custody and hardware wallet with VPN on linux and tor with your own node and electrum server from day 1?

Gotta start somewhere, does not have to be the ethos long term, but for the jump start and exposure I think its great.