There is instant SEPA in Europe. It’s one of the few real-time fiat options. PayPal, Revolut and stuff is all also full KYC, with the slight advantage that for the latter two only the state can get your identity, while SEPA (wire) everybody with a little skill can get your name, address and birthdate

Well, I wouldn’t assume you’d do it. But unfortunately I know too many beginners who do it because they’ve been told „go p2p, for privacy“ with no additional info.

And several so called „privacy advocates“ even discourage Lightning obfuscation, recommending only p2p even with wire and already reversible mixers.

Which is why this is a loaded topic for me.

Can anybody please zap me a billion sats, please?

Wanna focus fully on building on bitcoin.

Which was my point 🤷

P2P is cool and needs to grow, but I would like to see better arguments for it than privacy.

And if you argue for privacy via p2p, please caution that this doesn’t apply if you wire money from your bank account.

Now you are being naive. There is a reason they would like to surveil every single fiat transaction.

A major purpose of TLAs is to have dirt on as many people as possible to silence inconvenient people.

With the complicated and often not completely finalized tax laws on bitcoin, it’s just too tempting.

In the end the only thing they had on Al Capone was taxes.

Mining or earning. But we were talking about buying 🤷

What is private about the P2P?

You are giving your counterparty banking info and BTC address.

KYC light you give the exchange baking info and BTC address.

Both get the same info. The advantage of exchanges is that you know who has your data and it’s only one partner that needs to he trustworthy.

The downside is that it’s one partner who has all transactions.

Unfortunately that’s what they do. I used to work in the surveillance tech industry.

They go to extreme lengths to get dirt on normal people, but never take action on the big criminals, because those are their bosses or their bosses bosses/friends.

They have them in normal supermarkets, with no cameras that I know of, besides what you normally encounter in a supermarket 😅

But yes, if you are extremely paranoid nothing is save. Even the gift card might be a Fed plant and tracked with facial recognition and a deal with the gift card provider.

Which is why the most important privacy measure of all is to buy bitcoin and by doing so defund the suckers who have an unlimited fiat budget to stalk you.

But I’m curious, what’s the danger of the ATM?

No, but I like to go to Prague and it’s on the same continent as I am 🤷

Yes, maybe I need to articulate better.

Refer to the beginning of this thread. The whole point was that he argued as if P2P is always better privacy than KYC.

Which simply is false.

And the whole thread I was arguing about the different methods and trade-offs for each.

Can we agree that the case I originally made „normal fiat transaction p2p vs KYC light“ has no real privacy benefit? You just doxx yourself to different people.

We are aligned on that🤷

No, it’s a fucking trade off. Like everything. You yourself just said that you prefer the gift card over the more private, but costlier ATM.

The point is that it’s simply not true that just going on a P2P exchange with Fiat has more privacy or anonymity.

And it’s dangerous for beginners if it’s promoted that way.

We are talking about privacy, not cost. And I’ve seen them way cheaper than that.

I said, I’m noticing the pattern. The „privacy is not anonymity“ argument is factually false and ALWAYS comes up when discussing p2p exchanges, often from people I’m confident are spooks.

So I assume people who make it are either spooks themselves or are regurgitating the argument spooks told them.

There is no good method using Fiat online.

The best method is the KYC atm.

Buying online, you must assume that you are tracked and be careful with the funds bought.

And as I said, I’m not against p2p.

I’m just against people pretending like it had good privacy, when it will expose the information of most beginners to worse people than exchanges.

Secrecy isn’t anonymity. Privacy without anonymity is not possible and it’s not what the manifesto says.

If heard several people argue like you do and the common theme was that these people advocates against all effective privacy measures and for going bank wire on hodlhodl, which to me makes them guaranteed spooks.

Buy a gift card in a physical store with cash and to make sure that the address used never touches any UTXO that may be traceable to you.

And there it is. The old „privacy is not anonymity argument“. This tells me you either are a spook or been duped by one.

Without anonymity you don’t have privacy. Simple as that.

But to make it very clear:

You buy Sats KYC light, the exchange knows who you are and your bitcoin address.

You buy Sats on hodlhodl, counterparty knows who you are and your bitcoin address with very little effort (unless you go to extreme efforts).

Where the f is the privacy benefit?

You can only choose who you expose your info to.

Privacy after purchase is much more effective imo.