Comment by MassPikeMike
4 days ago
I hate to be the one to throw stones at an outfit that is trying to do something good, protecting people's privacy.
But the claim in Obscura's FAQ that paying with Bitcoin or Monero offers more privacy than paying with a credit card is sadly misguided. No-KYC cryptocurrency is largely a thing of the past, and outfits like Chainanalysis can associate a Lightning or Monero address to a human with near-perfect accuracy. The fact that Obscura's FAQ doesn't acknowledge this makes me feel like its author was either pretending this is not the case, or is unaware of it. Either of those is pretty bad.
Mullvad lets customers sign up for an account and pay in cash, which is a good, privacy-preserving choice. In the US, payment by postal money order or by gift card, either of which can be purchased with cash, would also be good choices. Users, and Obscura, should not be fooled by some vague association of cryptocurrency and privacy. In the age of ubiquitous KYC that ship has sailed with the possible exception of ZCash. And I wouldn't bet my life on ZCash, either.
Bisq exists, I've been using it for years to obtain Bitcoin and Monero for DNM stuff, it's pretty okay. I did prefer LocalMonero for swapping, before they shut down.
Lately Bisq's been going through some bullshit, a few months ago they had a security issue and they shut the whole network down by setting it to require a version of the software that didn't exist for weeks, and lately they've been requiring mandatory updates every week or so. It does work by having you make money transfers to total strangers, revealing your full details, but it's the best I've found.
IIRC, Bisq 2 is for buying your very first BTC in small amounts at a premium (a Matrix chatroom still also exists for this), Bisq 1 is for buying larger amounts at closer to cost but requires a security deposit first.
> Chainanalysis can associate a Monero address to a human with near-perfect accuracy
citation needed.
that said, the anonymity set in monero for the moment is 16 per transaction and isn't zero knowledge (a quantum adversary can view the transaction graph but not the amounts) which isn't ideal. they are apparently working on changing this.