I’d bet you can guess why

  • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    There is no privacy-focused PayPal alternative in the US, in part because US money transfer laws and policies (e.g. Know Your Customer) directly oppose privacy.

    However, there are a couple of new projects that might eventually lead to something less bad for privacy than PayPal is:

    • GNU Taler, if they ever get any exchanges, and they either figure out how to mitigate the high fees for wire transfers or use some other settlement method when people on different exchanges make small payments. (Their plan to use batch wire transfers won’t help until the exchanges get a lot of adoption and frequent use. Of course, high fees discourage adoption and use, so this might not ever happen.)
    • FedNow, if banks ever use it to offer appealing person-to-person payment services instead of just using it for themselves and their business customers.
    • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      Monero as the current fiat system becomes more and more untenable and people look for a solution not controlled by governments.

      • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 months ago

        Cryptocurrencies are not reliably fungible, nor stable, nor widely accepted. They have their uses, but they are not suitable replacements for PayPal and not what OP asked for.

        • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          Monero is fungible and especially when using the one-year moving average is quite stable. The variance on either side of the moving average is about 15% and that will decrease as adoption occurs. I run a small store where I sell products for Monero at stable prices for three months in a row by using the moving average as my price point.