I have changed the example of a restaurant and just said good or service. Obviously Binance Pay or whatever isn't the case here. And about sending the funds to another address, it wouldn't work.

Address A has 1 BTC
Address B is your own address that you generate and you send 200 USD worth to it to spend on the good/service upon arrival
The owner of the address that is selling this good/service is able to see that you had 200 USD and now it has 0, but can see that it received said 200 USD from an address that has 1 BTC. Of course, plausible deniability applies and cannot be proven you own 1 BTC, but if you go again to the same good/service provider in the future with a new address, they will see again that all these funds come from Address A. This doesn't look that great privacy wise.

Im trying to find a deleted post that was accidentally deleted, that may contain a specific text you are looking for. For instance, an email address, btc address, url. That is, to search for strings on deleted posts, so I can find this information. It would be really useful. I know someone here maintains a sort of an archive of the website, not sure where I saw this. Could it be possible to search for something specific on such archive? Thanks.

If you get paid in BTC address you have on an Electrum wallet, and you want to pay for someone that sells a good or service in exchange of BTC, but for obvious reasons you don't want to disclose how much BTC is your address holding to the person/entity that sells such good or service because they could easily look up your public address after you pay them on a blockchain explorer and see the funds... then how would you do this?

For example, you get paid in address A which has 0.1 BTC

You don't want to disclose you own 0.1 BTC to this person/entity, so you want to spend 200 USD on this good or service, which are like 0.004855 BTC at current rate.

How do you do this?

Should one download some of these "privacy wallets", create an address there and make a transaction with the funds you want to spend (0.004855 in this case) and then pay from that wallet's address? but the wallet has to have Android support for handheld usage then since I will pay once I arrive on the spot, not in advance.

Also, what about the fees? you lose money each time you send to the address that you want to spend from. This is problem. Also, exchange rate varies. You may send 0.004855 BTC to the new address you want to spend from, but this may be less than USD by the time you arrive (or more, but less imagine it's less)

I just don't know how to go about this, too many moving parts.

Same reason any open source project that has privacy in mind makes money: Donations. This is the only way often times, that these projects get any funding. They don't usually send any services, precisely because they don't want to collect any data from costumers only to get hacked and have it leaked along with your interest in privacy.

You could say the same thing from Bitcoin developers. The way it works is that they contribute to the project and this forms a portfolio they can use to find jobs elsewhere with an actual salary. A lot continue working on Bitcoin after that from real interest in the project.

But their massive BTC stack wouldn't make that a big deal isn't it? we have Saylor selling 5000 shares everyday until april so we are going to see what that does to the price. So far the premium plummeted to the point it was negative and today it was interesting as MSTR surged 3.8% or so while BTC was struggling, miners did as well underperform. So perhaps the equilibrium has been reached. I doubt anyone holding MSTR now wants to sell for ETF, they already did, so that may be priced out. If MSTR can continue to deliver a cool 1.25-1.5% premium on BTC performance the stock will continue to be desirable for those that want some leverage in BTC. Of course the business side has to be taken care of. According to Adam Back Saylor is doing good. And if we compare ETF to MSTR im not sure what's safer. I trust Saylor more than these guys as a custodian. Mostly because Saylor has his own stack so he knows what he's doing.

Running Linux will solve most issues. Most malware runs on windows due source code being closed, so this is perfect to embed malicious code into programs Get Ubuntu and disable all possible tracking for ads Amazon and so on assuming they still do that and you are good. An alternative would be Linux Mint. Then just don't visit any dumb websites and that's all you need to be honest. But of course you should have a separate laptop that hosts your private keys that never connects to the internet and then have a separate laptop to broadcast transactions, look up airgap bitcoin node wallet on google and get that setup for max protection.

You are only overcomplicating things isn't? Since you are sending your signature campaign earnings throught Monero, and then into an exchange, you are just going to get your dox attached to Monero transactions, and exchanges are increasingly more anti privacy coins, and I suspect governments wouldn't be a fan as well. So that really does not fix anything. Once you cash out, either your bank or your government could ask for proof of funds as well. Not really a solution imo. Either you don't report it, or you try to be as clear as possible if you report it. The problem is, if you don't report it, then what do you do with the coins? You cannot barely do anything with crypto if you don't convert it to fiat anyway.

Gary has to say that because what else could he say? The SEC has approved the ETF, so the vehicle of investment has to be defined one way or another. If it is not a security, then it is a commodity. And they definitely did not want to talk about it as a currency since that would make it look like a legit alternative to the CBDCs that they will launch. In any case, the impact on the price has been a classic sell the new events, now we will see just how much of a frontrun was this vs legit demand. Its been pumping for months and ROIs are crazy on proxies like miners and MSTR, cooldown incoming, 42k, 39k, 30k supports on the line, we'll see if those hold before halving effect kicks in.

Have you visited shitcoin.club places? there's a sign that says, "we are recording you and we will store this data for X hours". You are supposed to believe that the recording is for security purposes presumably, and you also have to believe this is not stored and handed to third parties as requested. There also have been hacks of ATM businesses that revealed customer data. It's one of those things. There's too much risk with KYC'ing your stuff, your data can be out in the wild and you become a target for thieves.

If you can find someone you trust I guess that is the way to go, but there is no way for me to trust some random people. Who knows who the hell are you meeting. They may 5$ wrench on you and run with the funds. You are also revealing yourself as a BTC holder which is not smart.

I guess when CBCDs arrive and they ban cash, then the transition to using Bitcoin as a currency will be natural irrespective of what governments have to say about it, because there will always be a demand for cash. The problem is, BTC is not viable as a currency, unless LN doesn't suck for the mainstream user and I have never used it so I can't say for sure.

It was clear that the ETF was a sell the news event. If you look at the return on investment for BTC and all bitcoin proxies in 2023, you would see that the ETF hype has been frontrun for months, resulting in a bubble that will at least burst forming a local top. 30k is not out of the table, even 25k in some panic wick. Once euphoria cools down then you can start thinking about the real bull run where FOMO will kick in and you will see Bitcoin on TV every day again. This time it will not be a quick sell off on mainstream arrival, it will hang very high for a long time, until a recession or something else kicks in and panic ensues again. Always keep a bag of cash because you never know how high BTC can go but definitely how low as well.

Which ATM's I guess you mean shitcoin.club brand because everyone else is already under KYC/AML stuff, and from the shitcoin.club ATM's that still remain free, they are slowly but surely going to force KYC into every single ATM in the world, of at least the developed first world, I have no idea how it works on the rest. The thing is, even in the so called free of KYC ATMs like shitcoin.club, you are still trusting that they don't have undisclosed deals with the government. Realize the fact that these ATM's record you, and there are recordings nearby as well, you can get profiled. There's also the annoyance of ATM's not having funds when you are withdrawing. shitcoin.club shows current funds per ATM on some spots but I doubt the websites I doubt are updated in real time.

It is ultimately just not convenient to use these. Soon it will just be impossible. At the end of the day we are going to need to really push the currency side of BTC because trading for cash will just be mission impossible.

The big problem is as the mainstream (voters) get into BTC through ETF and other user friendly products, that means potential voters losing money that turn into pissed off costumers at BTC, which start demanding changes on the code. Politicians will do whatever it takes to collect ballots, so if there is a big movement of angry people that want to change the BTC protocol for whatever reasons, that's something to consider.

There may also be a big chunk of the population mad to see others getting rich from BTC, and start demanding that mining is banned and whatnot. Consider that people like AOC could become presidents in the future. If they get a real chance to ban mining, they will try.

BTC should wake up from this ETF euphoria one day and realize it is an adversarial asset in nature, and must be ready for that.

That's pretty crazy. Was it Coinbase? I've heard Coinbase is insanely strict nowadays, to the point is just nonviable to deposit any coins that don't come from Coinbase itself, as in back and forth from Coinbase into your wallet back to Coinbase is ok, but anything else adds additional steps of complexity that may lock you out of the coins until you deliver some context. But with a lawyer you may find a solution. The real problem here would be with the taxman. Because most people will not be able to explain every satoshi ever on his wallet, so these are the ones that are expert in screwing innocent people up that just obtained some coins here and there along the years, then you want to cash out and they treat you like you are El Chapo or something.

It doesn't really matter we believe in or not isn't it. What matters is the consequences of having said alarm to get triggered once you deposit your coins into an exchange next to your full name, address and so on. Now you are screwed. This is the problem. One doesn't know who is paying you, where the coins come from. Only coins that come from a regulated exchange or are freshly mined I would consider safe to deposit into an exchange.

If someone pays you and these enable some sort of a trigger when you go into an exchange and deposit them, now you are audited, and have a case. You have to prove you are innocent. The authorities hate people that deal with cryptos by default, and now you have to prove to them that you didn't sell any drugs for them or something, that you just were part of an advertiser campaign and you are just chilling talking on a forum, but the thing is, you don't want to be involved into such situation. You said the phrase *should* be okay. Keyword should. You never know so I would prefer not to.

I should have said miners and developers. Of course you need the hashrate too, but that can be bought. If ETF-BTC can promise higher valuations, miners may follow, since they are economic actors that seek profit. If the majority of economic activity is happening on ETF-BTC, they may get more from the fees in there. As far as developers, we have developers fucking with our money in the form of Ordinals already. They could also buy people like Elon Musk type PR to pump their hardfork. They could also buy lobbysts to pass laws that outlaw non ETF-BTC for enabling money laundering or whatever. Im sure that's their long term goal with all of this actually. Does anyone seriously think they have approved ETF's if they don't think they can use it to control BTC? Their motto has been "We'll tame Bitcoin" for years now. This is all part of the plan. The question is, if community of actual BTC holders will fall for it. At the end of the day, in any hardfork both sides get shares of each token, so we'll see who dumps on who.

Thanks a lot for the replies. As it stands, I do not see any clear way to use Bitcoin in a way that could give you non KYC cash that doesn't entail a lot of risk. Unless you have trusted people to share for cash, and know these people will not betray you in the future which is not really predictable, then you are risking a lot. Cash by mail is indeed pretty dodgy. If you find someone that has a good rating, you will be buying from these people a lot of times, so you are telling them you have BTC that gets send to some PO box. Also getting people involved (as you mentioned, asking a friend to put their name on this) is not very realistic. At the end of the day, I don't see any use for BTC that has no KYC unless you can pay directly with BTC, so I hope it becomes more mainstream eventually. And of course, there's the problem of the fees etc, and I have no idea how LN works yet.

Im trying to find someone with experience on Bisq as I would like to give this a try. I would need to have some cash disposable each month without KYC. From all the options that Bisq offers, the only one I see as viable is cash by mail. Since the alternatives are to do bank transfers, which would leave a record for the taxman to ask about in x years, or meeting with random people, which is dangerous for obvious reason, the only alternative I see is to receive some cash bills on an envelope. Of course, this presents many concers from security and privacy pov, namely:

1) How do you find a seller you could trust?
2) How do you request a reasonable amount? what one should expect with this method?
3) How do you keep yourself safe from being tracked as the person that received the cash?
4) If you can use alternative addresses that aren't your home for obvious reasons, then what would these be?
5) What are some realistic fees to expect in this method?
6) How much time should you wait for the cash to arrive before you start to worry and what if it doesn't arrive?

Im just trying to understand how process works. Would be really handy to be able to sell a discrete amount each month for physical cash usage. Unfortunately the people accepting BTC are still a tiny %, and with current fees, it is too slow and expensive for cash usage anyway, I prefer to have the physical cash.

I have mixed thoughts about it. On the one hand you have the issue of transactions becoming really expensive because the blockchain is being used for dumb stuff like this, but on the other hand, this fear of how in the long run Bitcoin would collapse upon itself in 100 years when mining rewards were too low, perhaps are now out of the question because all these weird usages people are willing to make out of the blockchain? at the end of the day as long as there is demand for the blockchain, there will be fees an thus there will be miners working on processing blocks. But one would also assume that fees would be high in the future due transactions alone. We will see how things develop, but removing ordinals doesn't seem realistic right now.

I was looking for some ETF news and apparently the VanEck one will pledge 5% of earnings to "Bitcoin core developers" during the next 10 years from the money they'll make on fees.

I imagined an hypothetical scenario where there is a massive hack or some sort of a disaster scenario where there are massive losses, and now those same good samaritans that are funding developers start pushing a campaign to engineer a rollback of the blockchain Vitalik style. What would happen? If in the future ETF holders become the 99% and 1% are self-custodians, then it will be on their interest to push this agenda. What if they have enough % of developers under their payroll, and enough people supporting it because they lost their money, and start pushing for a hard fork? What would be the game theory outcome scenarios at play here?

This could be applied to any other narrative to come up with a hardfork. Like, BTC pollutes the environment, let's go to PoS, or this and that. But the one I could see coming, is seeing a massive loss and then angry people wanting a rollback and start campaigning to pass laws that force developers to do this and so on. Most custodians are using Coinbase, but some will be self-custodians, Fidelity being one of them. I expect their efforts to pass such hardfork to fail, but who knows if like I said, most people in the future depend on ETFs and start pushing for laws to "protect investors" that force developers and miners to do rollback plans and so on. This sounds ridiculous now but you never know.

Yeah but I want to know what to do when Bitcoin Core stops wanting to open good ol 2013 wallets. Do I just run these 2 by then and we are good?