Breaking News: Pixel 8 out. Get it for Monero
It’s still mind boggling how people are okay with buying phones without unlocked root and bootloader. Not your root, not your phone.
Some weeks ago I had a problem that a friend’s phone was randomly wiping data from crypto wallet apps. He was furious, and wanted to leave crypto altogether. After some digging, I found that Google Play Protection (a.k.a. Google’s Virus Scanner) detected there were crypto apps on the phone, and somehow decided to disrupt them. Not outright uninstall, but slowly disrupt them, just enough for the user to get frustrated and abandon it, or install another app.
Now think about it: if TPTB want to disrupt crypto adoption, they’ll just gatekeep users from crypto wallets, or demand OS-level KYC/AML. In that world, crypto adoption is impossible… Unless some Chinese manufacturer decided to make cheap unlocked phones, or we have something like a Raspberry Pi phone.
Insofar as I trust GrapheneOS, there are also alternatives:
* Purism's Librem 5
* No smartphone at all, and all comms and crypto is performed via non-ME corebooted computers using either QubesOS, TailsOS, or PureOS (see Purism, https://puri.sm/products/, and NitroKey, https://shop.nitrokey.com/shop)
But yes, crypto on-ramps are getting squeezed from all directions. I even heard that Binance have blocked UK from becoming new users.
Intel/AMD x86 or Apple’s M-series CPUs SoC are a privacy dead end. No matter how much internal backdoors you deactivate, it can always auto-magically come back and bite you in the ass. RISC-V is definitely the future. Perhaps one day this architecture will become powerful enough to fluently run a Desktop Linux or a smart-phone. Then Monero might stand a chance.
But yes, crypto on-ramps are getting squeezed from all directions. I even heard that Binance have blocked UK from becoming new users.
Another example: merchants in Serbia aren’t legally allowed to accept crypto directly, they must go through a third-party “money transmitter” licensed by the government. I suppose only transparent coins will be supported, and even then customers will be required to undergo a KYC/AML with the money transmitter. It’s a shit show. A merchant simply showing a QR code to their own private wallet would be committing a tax fraud similar to accepting cash OTC and not through a cash register.
This is admittedly worrying since the war on privacy is being waged globally on both hardware and software fronts simultaneously.
Both fronts are a battlefield. Hamas slipped through Israeli intelligence in part because they evaded SoC backdoors using Huawei to coordinate.
> in Serbia (they) aren’t legally allowed to accept crypto directly, they must go through a third-party “money transmitter” licensed by the government.
RISC-V looks awesome, thanks. I had no idea and I agree, desktop RISC-V could be a great and viable future.
Serbian citizens will no doubt flout what is "legally allowed", as is their natural right via non-KYC/AML exchanges/swaps/local and long may it live.
Let's not forget this too when it comes to Monero, the global black market is worth trillions. The 3-letter agencies have a trillion-dollar vested interest in an untraceable off-the-books currency too. ZCash lost, XMR wins.
