I’ve been noticing this lately. If you want to buy Monero or other cryptocurrencies, you have to KYC, set up accounts, have a bank account, wire money, all that stuff.

However, if you want to spend it or sell it there are a plethora of options, as simple as buying a prepaid card, or just doing business with people that accept it directly.

Bonus: once your capital is in Monero or Bitcoin or something, moving it around is relatively easy with swap services, atomic swaps and the like. Even p2p services, you don’t have to worry about PayPal, bank accounts, cash in the mail or any of that. Once your capital is internet native you’re golden.

This is a sign to me that it’s more valuable than fiat and people are seeing that. Now it makes more (practical, tangible) sense to get all your capital into cryptocurrency than keeping it in fiat and just buying cryptocurrency when you need it, as it was a few years ago. If you can get all your capital into Monero or something, you can easily get fiat when you need it, the reverse is not as true.

I predict that the barriers to entry will be increasingly bigger than the barriers to exit as time goes on, in an attempt to stop the bleeding, but that it will backfire into people preferring crypto directly and make things better for all of us. And this also means less of a need to exit in the first place.

  • Blake@monero.town
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    9 months ago

    This is a sign to me that it’s more valuable than fiat [having capital in crypto]

    to me it’s a sign that capital in crypto is a threat to the global banking mafia, they first want to destroy on-ramps, but today the BIS announced they will be surveilling bitcoin with the aim of de-anonymising transactions, such that off-ramps too can be tainted. (source https://nitter.net/samcallah/status/1712128988611563803 ) +inb4 ‘this is good for munero’

    and yes, right now we have localmonero but that’s a lot of eggs in one, admittedly good, basket…

    • mister_monster@monero.townOP
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      9 months ago

      I didn’t want to spiel too much in the post, but that’s a sign that it’s valuable and they know it, they expect people to exit with their capital and they are trying to prevent it. It’s valuable because being in control of your own capital is valuable.

  • Saki@monero.town
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    9 months ago

    This is a sign to me that it’s more valuable than fiat and people are seeing that.

    That’s an interesting observation, and I think that’s correct about Monero. If 1 XMR is say 140 €, I do feel 1 XMR is much more precious than 140 €, if that makes sense.

    If it’s a relatively small amount, you can try (KYC-free) DEX like listed in kycnot.me — e.g. Bisq for BTC, and (hopefully!) Haveno is coming for XMR. There are also crypto ATMs, depending on the place you live… Also, the rumor has it in Vietnam you can do fiat <–> xmr freely w/o KYC (not sure if it’s true). Either way, like you said, once you get whatever coin, coin-coin is usually trivial.

    • mister_monster@monero.townOP
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      9 months ago

      ATMs are outrageously expensive, 25-35% above the going rate! You’re better off going to LocalMonero. Even there it’s a little bit more. That price differential tells me which system is more valuable.

      • Saki@monero.town
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        9 months ago

        That’s kind of a rip-off yeah, but it does prove your point too: there are people who want to buy 1 XMR for $200, even if it’s $150 on CEX. A street price. True value, so to speak?

      • shinobi@monero.town
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        9 months ago

        Depends the ATM & location. In Bucharest, Romania, cryptocurrency ATMs are plentiful & carry a fee that’s €2 to €5. Usually up to €5000 without KYC. Not too bad at all. If we can deploy more of these machines wherever possible, this will tremendously help our cryptocurrency economy.

  • onelikeandidie@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I recently bought montero using LocalMonero recently and I didn’t kyc or anything like that. Although I did use Revolut to make the exchange, there’s other ways to exchange monero there that don’t require KYC, like cash in hand, revolut, cash by mail, bank transfer, transfer wise, paysafe and some others. I bet you can find a way that satisfies your needs there.

    I do agree that it’s a little hard to buy monero nowadays, most of the trades there require KYC or some other verification and sites that provide an exchange require KYC like Kraken or something but if you’re willing to dig a little harder you can find people willing to accept that money for you.

    • mister_monster@monero.townOP
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      9 months ago

      All of that besides cash by mail requires KYC with the fiat payment processor. And cash by mail has it’s own risks.

      That said, it’s the only way I’ll do it going forward. The rest of it is just too cumbersome. I don’t want a bank account, used to be I needed one, now with crypto who really does? It’s artificially propped up. So it’s just another obstacle to me.

  • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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    9 months ago

    You do have a good point. My method for getting it is through Coinbase and obviously I had to do know your customer to get a Coinbase account. I deposit dollars into Coinbase and then transform them to USDC and send them to a standalone Ethereum wallet on Polygon to keep the fees down. I then use Trocador to get the USDC into Monero. But I am finding more and more that using the Monero is incredibly easy like you mentioned.