That, and there's zero backward or forward secrecy by design. Avoiding intermediaries can't ameliorate the hazards of the protocol.

Exactly. Hence why I don’t advocate for any cryptocurrency at all, personally. It’s fraught with peril and the juice really isn’t worth the squeeze to me. Others may have a different calculus, but I’d rather not be looking over my shoulder constantly.

Oh, same, I've never touched the stuff. That was pure intuition 15 years ago; these days I think of it as a longterm investment paying major dividends in peace of mind.

Of course it would be easy to say one's never touched crypto, and not so easy to prove, as with any negative. I don't care. If I ever get bounced with a King Dick, it'll far more likely be because I said something someone didn't like - which seems to happen about as often as I open my mouth, these days.

In any case they better not let me hear them coming. Wiser to spin the block in a car, really. I've never been hit with a wrench before, but it did once take more than a hammer to get me off my feet.

Coinbase is also the least messed up exchange on this front, at least with even a whiff of legality.

Yeah, they've been pushing hard since 2020 to get picked as the winner of a government-guaranteed monopoly on legal ramps between USD and crypto. It looks like they might pull it off, too. I haven't stopped being glad I didn't decide to work for Armstrong in '21 but I have to give him he's got the nous to recognize what a good thing Visa's always had going. I wonder how many skeletons they buried in the 60s...