Your solution to a privacy problem vis-a-vis mega corporations involves moving your transaction to a public block chain?

From the outside, the blockchain is just a giant bunch of transactions. No company like a Amazon or Visa has a clear picture of what those transactions are about.

Now in the times of lightning, there is not even a transaction for the payment of a book. Payments are bundled into channels. Individual lightning payments do not leave any trace on the blockchain.

> No company like a Amazon or Visa has a clear picture of what those transactions are about.

That's where you're probably wrong. If the NSA can listen to anyone on the planet through their phone, they surely have the data that exchanges are legally obligated to collect in terms of validating all users by their government documents, aka the place 99% of bitcoin users probably get their coin.

The rest is just mapping it all together and correlating the remaining blank accounts with the piles of other data they've got on each person, which I'm sure they're easily capable of. A bitcoin transaction and a book download coming from a the same IP at roughly the same time are likely mappable to a physical person.

Not a bad solution if you consider systems like Monero where transaction info isn’t easily obtained from the ledger.

Lightening transactions are mostly private and anonymous.

Why would A apply if you're acquiring DRM-free files? "Mega-corporations" wouldn't know about them.

Which payment provider do you use? I only know payment providers who are mega cooperations: Visa, Paypal etc.

What payment provider do you use to buy Bitcoin?

There are plenty of anonymous (even decentralized) P2P market places for trading crypto for cash, bank transfers, or other agreed upon forms of payment.

I have over 2x my fiat savings in crypto and none of it could easily be traced to my real identity.

Just last week I walked into a random "crypto exchange service" in the city I was visiting and sold them USDT and walked out with $10k in cash. No kyc. They didn't even ask my name. They were buying and selling for only 0.5% commission.

It’s cool that you got cash for the USDT that you had but that had very little to do with my asking somebody that wants to only buy books with Bitcoin what payment processor they used to get the Bitcoin that they have.

What do you mean? As I mentioned, the reverse is just as easy.

You give then cash, they give you USDT or BTC. Now you can buy all the ebooks you want with anonymous crypto.

It had enough relevance for me to learn something from it.

Just because you don’t find a comment useful doesn’t mean no one else will.

This is interesting. Every mention of buying a specific good in a specific context with Bitcoin in particular is a valuable moment to learn about each other’s cash and USDT holdings.

I don't understand the reason for your sarcasm. In your original reply, were you not asking for an anonymous way to obtain Bitcoin, so that one could then use it to buy books?

My reply described how it's easily possible to convert USDT to fiat because I assumed it was obvious that the process is similar in both directions and can be done for any common form of crypto, including Bitcoin.

Your anecdote about your exchanging the USDT that you held for cash in your city is has virtually zero bearing in the average consumer. Not everyone has the access to piles of non-KYC no-questions-asked cash and asserting otherwise is an embarrassing pivot to distract from your strange brag about your net worth.

Also your story begins with you holding USDT. I am assuming that you were able to amass your entire crypto fortune without ever involving a bank account or debit card, because otherwise your answer to my question would likely be “Visa or Mastercard” when it comes to how you came to possess any crypto assets in the first place.

I understand your confusion, but the tone of your replies is crappy. If you didn’t like an answer, ask another question to continue the discussion.

Acting like a petulant child doesn’t do anyone any good.

You bragged about money laundering in a thread about ebooks buddy. “I have access to a Hawala” is not constructive to the conversation in the slightest.

You're confusing me with someone else. Do you see the irony in complaining about unconstructive comments with a reply that is so obviously wrong and unrelated to the parent? Awful tone and childish argumentation to boot.

My mistake, it is the case that you are the one that defended the learning value of the person bragging about money laundering in the ebook thread.

Out of curiosity, what did you learn?

You're almost there: the parent didn't describe money laundering, they described a legal conversion. It's your prerogative to reflexively interpret privacy concerns as criminality, but it isn't useful for a constructive discussion.

I learnt that Cryto ATM withdrawal limits have grown significantly in the last few years.

It’s a bit of a shame that you’re primarily interested in my posting style, not payment processing, crypto or the publishing industry.

As a fun observation, when you see someone discussing something inane like buying ebooks, it’s actually pretty odd for a stranger to hop in and volunteer details about how much money they have and to brag about how they knowingly pay a premium to avoid KYC when handling cash.

For example, if a stranger walked up to you on the street and interrupted your conversation with “I totally know a guy that’ll take any amount of cash you’ve got and give you untraceable crypto or vice versa, no questions asked” without volunteering any other information, you’d be better off being suspicious of him rather than the person being skeptical of that guy.

If you think GP is talking about “Bitcoin ATMs”, can you point me to one that will dispense $10,000 cash from USDT, not Bitcoin without any KYC?

But please go on with your critique.

Nah I'm good, I tried to get my point across. You don't seem to be able to engage with what I'm saying.

Maybe unpopular opinion, but I worked at "mega-coorporations" and nobody cares what you buy. You are just a number in a system that at most uses your buying history to suggest you books to buy.

> that at most uses your buying history to suggest you books to buy

There you have it. And beyond that, the corporation will sell the data to whoever if profitable. They will abuse them any time there is anything to gain.

I think getting recommendation of similar books to read is a feature rathen than a bug. If you ask your friend to recommend a book the first question they'll usually ask is 'what kinds of book do you like'. Either that or you get recommended whatever NYTimes says is the bestseller (which may not match your taste).

There you have it, what is the horrible thing about a company suggesting you books?

They won't sell it because it is their advantage.

> uses your buying history to suggest you books to buy

So they do care and intend to use the information to practice psychological tricks and deception to make me buy more things (probably not just books) and also sell it to others who want to do the same. No thanks!

Yeah, right. So what do you rather have when you get into a website, tailored recommendations or generic ones which do not apply to you?

I rather have targeted adds of things that I might need than porn and poker adds.

In order of preference:

1. No recommendations

2. Generic recommendations

3. Tailored recommendations

4. Paid ads

I’ll always use an ad blocker to aim for (1) anyway, but shouldn’t have to rely on that.