What do you use to accept one-time donations without revealing your identity?
I don't really want to reveal my identity online and I've been trying to find how I can do that. It seems like Patreon is the only one that acts as a middleman between you and the donator but it only does monthly subscriptions which I don't really want to have..
Short answer: you can't.
Long answer: you can use the same schemes people use for money laundering, but you risk a knock on the door from your friendly LEO and you won't have any way to prove the money didn't come from drug deals, human trafficking, or worse. That's where "guilty money" and "asset forfeiture" come into play (aka: any money you can't prove where it came from, will be taken from you).
The most anonymous and safe thing you can do, is to create a self-custodial crypto wallet, avoid linking it in any way to your identity, have people donate to it (in crypto), and use it to pay (in crypto) for stuff that can't be linked to you.
Otherwise, any bank or payment processor, including crypto exchanges, in 1st, 2nd, and even some 3rd world countries, has to meet with KYC requirements that will identify you, identify where the money came from, and identity where it went to, then keep those records for x years (5, 10... depends on the country).
You could probably set up a LLC or trust with a post office box address and VOIP number, depending on where you live. Then set up a business account with PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, etc. This will provide some measure of privacy from random people who donate but of course legally you will still be connected.
In Québec, all companies must have their "ultimate beneficiary" listed in their corporate listings so while a PO box and VOIP number are options, the listing would still have my full name and would be rather expensive to just.. accept money.
Hmm okay. Maybe some sort of legal forum about Québec laws might have some more insight. And true, this will all cost money so depending on the donations it may not be worth it.
There is crypto. You could take Bitcoin or if you want to be incredibly cautious Monero. It is an additional hurdle though for the average consumer.
I really really do not like cryptocurrencies and do not want to encourage anyone to use them.
the issue you'll run into is the rules and regulations on the finance industry. To prevent fraud, terrorism, or crime, there's know-your-client and anti-money-laundering rules that most financial services follow that require you to identify yourself.
Kofi lets you use a PayPal business account, or Stripe, which you set what is shown on the donors bank statement (so it'd show up as what you set it to, rather than a personal name/email). So that might be an option to protect you from being identified by donors, if that's your worry.
Right, Kofi does do that but to establish a Paypal business account, you need to have a registered entreprise as far as I can tell. To established a registered entreprise, I would need to, well, register it and then I might be liable for corporate tax and people will be able to simply look up the business and find my personal information there anyways. As for Stripe, as said in another document, it still leaked information about me which is quite annoying.
I have a PayPal business account and don't have any sort of registered business. They upgraded me at some point years ago when I was getting paid through them regularly. There might be a minimum that has to have gone through your account or something, but it shouldn't incur any corporate taxes or anything.
Drug trafficking rings use someone else to register the enterprise (family, friends, random guy they pay a token amount to, company in a tax haven) and use them as the fall guy to avoid revealing/linking their own name to the money.
Why don’t you like crypto???
Likely a combination of the energy consumption for something not entirely recognized as usable currency and its instability of price as a byproduct of it being a not entirely usable.
Tech is also pretty dirty unfortunately, so while it's morally ambiguous for us to buy/build computers ethically sourced we can at least use them in an effort to use them ethically (like using the parts of the animal). We're currently in a place where we can't really avoid computers, so using them respectfully should be the goal. Given the inefficiency of energy, immoderate conservation (i.e. using old hardware that would be landfilled) by over-purchasing everything available, and how these chips came to exist in the first place it does seem a little more difficult to happily engage in this particular form of currency.
Not OP, and personally I'm not against the idea of digital currency and I would personally accept any form of currency given to me, but I can understand wanting to avoid it. It's also not entirely private either, it's just as public as anything else just with the "benefit of the doubt" that washing it has.
wow. it's interesting to hear. I've been really into crypto since 2011. I see it as the best money humans have ever invented. It allows me to be my own bank. It eliminates the financial middle men that just make money off our money. The banking industry is corrupt and wastes a lot of energy. The only thing really missing in most crypto is privacy.
I think cryptocurrencies are largely inefficient, attract tons of scammers, generally propose deregulation of the finance sector and serve no real purpose.
Largely, I don't think they solve problems as much as they create them.
I'd argue that crypto is more efficient than the legacy fiat currency banking systems. The people/central banks that print money are some of the most corrupt on the planet. Scammers are attracted to money. There are plenty of fiat scammers too. Crypto doesn't propose any kind of regulation or deregulation. It's about decentralization and freedom to control your own assets. The fundamental driving force behind it is very much the same as the fediverse. It's decentralized money.
They serve the purpose of being able to quickly and easily send money around the globe without middle men that can censor your transactions. Anyone in the world can create a wallet for free. There are many places in the world where it's difficult to even get a bank account.
I don't understand where you got the ideas that you have about cryptocurrency?
I don't believe this to be true.
Sure, but you don't see fiat currencies being used to pump and dump.
It does. A system where you can transfer money without giving the information that would be needed for a government to tax you or regulate transactions is one that encourages people to commit fraud and avoid financial regulations.
No. Distributed systems are fundamentally incompatible with federated systems. They are both decentralized but the way they are decentralized is very different.
This is true but there are often reasons why transactions might be blocked. Some might be right and some might be wrong. If we're talking about fraud, blocking transactions is good. If we're talking about sex work, blocking transactions is bad. There is not an inherently bad value to blocking transactions.
I'd love to see information about that.
I've seen cryptocurrency spaces and have informed myself on the subject. I don't believe it solves real problems.
I guess there is no convincing you. You seem very set in your ways. Edit: but I'll try...
Let's forget about "crypto" and just discuss Bitcoin and Ethereum. Those are the only two that have real value.
Ethereum switched to proof of stake, which dropped the energy used by the network by 99%. Bitcoin is still proof of work, but we waste electricity on lots of silly things. A lot of bitcoin mining is already done with renewable sources of energy.
There are a lot of cryptos that are used for pump and dumps. That's doesn't take away from the utility and value of crypto that isn't used for that.
Blockchains are public ledgers. They are terrible for avoiding taxes!
There is a lot of overlap in the culture of distributed centralization and federated systems. Many people that are into Bitcoin are really into the fediverse too.
There may be "good" reasons to block someone from making transactions, but who gets to decide what is good? like you said, sex workers should have access to financial transactions just as much as any other worker.
Andreas Antonopoulos has done some good talks on banking the unbanked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Y_F3PS4JE
I use Bitcoin and Ethereum to store my wealth. From my perspective it solves the problem of needing to trust someone else with my money. It's not unheard of for banks to fail and take your money. Look at the debt crisis that happened in Cypress and Greece. They just took money from people's bank accounts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%932013_Cypriot_financial_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis
Well, proof of stake is less power hungry for sure but it also has a big con : The people who control most of the currency can now fake money. Considering our capitalist society with very big gaps in wealth, this is not an acceptable thing.
That's not great. These sources of energy could be used more productively. There's also nonetheless tons of it is done on coal.
Public ledgers which do not contain the information needed for taxation - pointless.
There is some but I think most people who want a distributed system will go for a distributed social service like Aether for example.
The people should through the government that establishes regulation. I don't believe workarounds to be solutions to these problems. After all, a sex worker can still not solicit work through social media and would be unlikely to look for help from the government if they need it because their work is prosecuted. Cryptocurrency does not solved that.
Again, I believe in the government needing to bring good laws to solve these problems. I don't believe that deregulation solves these issues. I also think that you have to trust an infinite number of people to trust in a blockchain system, people who are not regulated by law.
You have far too much faith in governments and laws created by humans. Laws change as society changes, and society is usually far ahead of laws in terms of evolution. They aren't real unless people agree on them. Like with weed being illegal federally in the US, but individual states not giving a fuck about federal laws. All governments are corrupt, and will never help solve the wealth gaps. The US government is bought and paid for by corporations. Places like china just control the population through fear. We need separation of money and state to have real freedom.
There is no need to trust people when using Bitcoin. it's a trustless system that uses a consensus algorithm. I would rather accumulate large amounts of wealth and help people than stay poor.
Did you watch the talk by Andreas?
This just means that we need to change our political system to be more wary of that.
Blockchain technology does not help to fix these problems, not sure why it's being brought up.
This is not true, we simply need better states. Money does not equal freedom.
There is, you need to trust that there are no flaws in the system. Programs have flaws - I don't know of any program that is perfect. Not only that but moving to proof of stake means trusting people who have the most money to not collude and create fake money in the blockchain.
If you don't see the accumulation of wealth through the usage of your currency as deeply problematic, I'm not sure what to tell you.
Yes, I have. I think the anger and frustration is misplaced.
Have fun staying poor.
There are better ways to drop out of a conversation than to offer a flippant, and, quite frankly, condescending dismissal of the other person's concerns. Just agree to disagree and move on.
Revealing it to who? The service you're getting money through? Good luck. The donor? That's pretty easy.
On PayPal you can set up a donation page that only lists the name you give it. It might have something to do with setting up an organization or something? Anyway, I use it for donations for my DayZ server and it doesn't display personal info, just the server name.
I don't know if CashApp shows anything other than the name you set, or if there's some way to find one with the other, but that might be worth looking at.
Right, that's what I want, just the donor.
On PayPal, It mentioned that it was the "legal business name" so I guess I got scared because of that.
CashApp is not available in Canada.
They may have different policies in Canada than in the US. I'd try contacting their support to find out!
Can't kofi be anonymous?
If it can, I can't figure it out.
Here are my observations on it:
It doesn't actually act as a shield like Patreon does where the only thing the person paying sees "Patreon LLC" on the transaction.
If you're willing to setup a business for this, there are services that provide registered office addresses at different locations, basically a mailbox for registration purpose.
For conveniency pick a city relatively close, but not necessarily your city of residence. Lookup services in your country to get details and prices.
It'll have a cost, and it won't make it perfectly anonymous, company records probably will show your name, and the registration/hosting service know who you are.
It really depends who you want to prevent from having your identity. It's likely impossible to receive money while being perfectly anonymous from all involved parties.
That is true, getting a PO box seems expensive though...
That said, I just want to hide from the donator, not the government nor the payment provider.
The issue is that even by incorporating a business, my full name be trivially found. Corporate listing services in Quebec are free.
I haven't been able to figure it out either. Which really sucks, but I understand why it is the way it is. I hope you can figure something out that works well for you soon!