That sounds like the perfect way to test stolen credit cards. In high-risk transactions, Stripe uses SMS 2FA so you're back to needing a SIM card.

Hmmm. Good point if Stripe use 2FA even if it would still be harder for the attacker as they would have to correlate payment - sms - account created - account joined group which is significantly harder to do than what is happening currently.

I guess what they'll do instead is to just outlaw Telegram :-|

That defeats the purpose, no?

No, only if you are

- fighting someone who controls Stripe well enough to browse transaction logs

- or you are fighting someone who can access your bank transactions (more likely in this case) and manage to correlate them correctly with Telegram account creation time

Both seems like huge steps forward compared to sms validation.

Furthermore: Bitcoin is not much safer for the ordinary citizen. If anything it is way easier to trace than cash and I guess slightly more different to trace than bank transfers.

Or am I missing something?

If you need anonymity you could buy a prepaid VISA