EngineerGaming

Yeah, but quite a few of them DO accept crypto - then it's fine I guess?

I would rather not use KYC even for low-sensitivity transactions. Because I am afraid of such sensitive info leaking. Sure, I do KYC for things like phone service already - but would avoid it at any cost where it can be done.

It asked for your phone number? That is the thing that angered me the most. I wonder why you would share this rather than ask a waiter and say you don't have Whatsapp, for example.

For my current phone, I did - I chose a Pixel. But I got aware about OS privacy while in the middle of using an unsupported phone, so for a while, I treated it as a "public place". So making a phone private may not be viable for everyone.

Plus, the supported phones may be more expensive. Even my current one was $300, which is a lot for me, in addition to not being officially sold here.

There are indeed shades of grey. Not only the presence of encryption itself matters, but the metadata, as well as details of the implementation. For example, Signal has all the messages encrypted - but it has the capability to know the identities of everyone and to build their social graph due to centralization.

The problem I have with Signal is that it itself pushes people onto the "shitty operating systems". It does not allow registering from desktop, at least officially. There are workarounds, but they're cumbersome (especially for a non-technical person, whom Signal is supposed to appeal to), and the official client outright tells you go to use a phone first. And even then, apparently the desktop client is not even full-featured, and not the priority.

I know there are degoogled OSes (running Graphene myself), but you'd need to get lucky or choose a phone with this in mind, while a random given laptop is likely to be able to run Linux.

My 7a cost $300 this summer. Very expensive for me but I don't regret. 8 is around $400 in that store now that 9 is out, maybe it would drop in price with time (or as 9a comes out?).

It was soon after Samourai arrests, so apparently the owners got scared of potential cryptocurrency crackdown and legal pressure. Its closure was pretty abrupt.

Localmonero died recently :( Haveno is the one that is taking its place.

Your supermarket accepts payments in cash, which is better anyway.

(I say as someone who pays for certain services in Monero)

And effectively cannot be selfhosted.

it's just a way to reward volunteers

Yea, but creating a node requires a BIG initial stake. So wonder how likely it is that you'd at least break even with this.