KYC would really be the main problem here if you do engage with them lots of requirements and verification but you can still make use of it without verification but on limited amounts of transactions.
no you cant make any transactions without verifying a phone number. i verified my bank account and my credit card but that is not enough. when i click on the "buy/sell" tab it brings up a dialog that says:
Phone Number Required
Please take a moment to verify your phone number.
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as stated, just get a phone for this. you can even use a virtual phone number but beware; if you lose access to that specific number you will be locked out of your account in certain circumstances.
i tried to use
https://textfree.us to create a new number and verify it but the text message (sms) never reached my textfree.us account. i read somewhere that some carriers are not allowed for verification but i could not find a list of approved carriers.
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Eventually I tried to perform the Authy initialization with my land-line anyway and it worked fine. I imagine that people are trying to use various voice-routing or whatever and the system is getting balled up so Authy just dumped land-line use all together (fucking their down-stream customers such as Coinbase in the process without telling them since they seemed unaware and/or argumentative about Authy's policy shifts.)
authy did not dump landline use. it is coinbase that is rejecting the codes that authy supplies: i downloaded the google chrome authy extension and it allowed me to verify my phone number with a voice call. i explain in the OP where coinbase rejects the codes.
