this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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Privacy

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Payment privacy (lemmy.zip)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by jobbies@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

What are the options for increased privacy in how you pay for things where you live?

Cash is the obvious answer, but what about buying stuff online?

UK here. Thinking of ditching cards/contactless for good old cash. No idea about online payments - not doing anything illegal so might persevere with cards for now. Zero experience with crypto.

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[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago

VPS and email are highly used in professionnal environment not only in hobbies. There is also AI where you can pay per tokens but I don't really use that. I have even found a local phone carrier that have added Lightning Network and Bitcoin onchain for payment recently.

I live in a country where the currency holds strong even against US petrodollar. Where bank transfers have no additionnal cost (with the exception of international ones) and where cash is still used, so yes here bitcoin is considered more a store of value investment, despite mutiple merchants accepting it as a medium of exchanges. And crypto is more on the gambling side anyways.

However in countries like Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam, India, Venezuela, etc... people understand that the monopole of their government over money is not necesserly a good thing in their current situation. Use adoption is much stronger in the global south than the north. We also saw during recent protest in France people asking other to move out from the banks and store cash and Bitcoin to destabilize their corrupted system.

I would also like to remind people that without Bitcoin, Sci-Hub and probably WikiLeaks would be dead as both got banned by payment processor. So that is a strong indactor of how useful they can be. Also a non-monetray interesting use is OpenTimeStamps and the guatemala's election of 2023 that takes benefits from the immuability nature of blocks produced by the consensus. Or also the mining facilities that reduce the price of the electricity bill of nearby citizen, or help renewable energy to sell when there is no demands or simply balanced the electricty grids. But one that I am really excited about is the ones that clear methane from the atmosphere to turn it into bitcoins and make it actual economically viable. It's not all black or white, we have to see uses outside our comfort zone :D