GM, Dear Readers !
In last 2 articles, I elaborated on things like OS, Browsers, Search Engines, Messengers and Mail Providers that we could use for increasing our level of privacy.
Now as we're going deeper and deeper into the digital privacy and digital freedom, let's ask another question.
What about private payments ? How about being able to pay privately for stuff irl 🏪 and online 🌐 ?
Before I start with the meaty 🥩 part, if you haven't read my previous articles, check those last 2 ones out. They have low visibility, but have real value and a lot of knowledge in them, so please share with friends and share your feedback.
Unfortunately my markdown skills are very limited 😆 and idk how to implement such list or series with interactive table with direct links to the article, just like @francistrdev does it 🧠 (to be honest I'm envious about his skills, shout out to you amigo, love your articles) !
In order not to digress however 😄, currently there is a lot of supervision and restriction when it comes to payments. Those restrictions are implemented by the governments and institutions around the world are implying as though everyone was a criminal, therefore requiring your ID, details on where you live, your picture and more.
That data and images are then stored in the companies cloud storage, which is prone to be hacked and exploited, thus your data might be obtained by an unwanted third-party like data-broker or hacker.
You cannot pay cash 💰 when the price exceeds some amount (legally you can't ⚖️, others said it's not for hoi polloi, we know it's possible though 🫣). Trust in banks is naive, banks algorithms are flawed and are able to block your account after you make e.g. Github Copilot purchase, you have then to call the bank to unlock your card, being at the same time honeypot for your financial data.
Meaning that banks 🏛️ are giving access to data to any law-enforcement 👮 without a single moment of hesitation 🫣.
All of your transactions in the bank 📃, all the details, all that can be passed to a spy-agencies 🕴 of the state.
Quick Disclaimer (one of many today :D ): I spent entire week, sleeping each day about 4 hours a day on average, working on this article. From it's style, fact checking, reviewing my cryptographic knowledge validity, listening to the podcasts with founders, investigation of compliance, asking questions for validation, waiting on the answers to edition, removing the providers that turnt out to be violating the privacy, while I already had a ready version of an article to push.
I don't write it to make you feel sorry to me or imposing my effort to trigger some of your feelings but rather to personally express my admiration 🫶 to journalists, especially independent ones, who do they work well and in a righteous way just like I tried to do (hopefully I managed to :) ).
Because I gone through a huge pile 🗄️ of articles with rankings/juxtapositions of cryptocurrencies without much details about their mechanism or non-kyc cards, that haven't been checked 🚫 by the authors, if they are fully non-kyc.
I did it the hard way and made thorough "investigation" aka. research 🕵 (I kind of like the word investigation, because for some crypto companies or projects, it might be useful to procedure one 🤣).
Long story short, If you enjoy my articles, I decided to open options for you to send donations 🫴🪙, the details are on the end of the article.
My articles always will be free, though I leave a free space for people that might want to appreciate my work and so helping me.
Thank you very much for your donations in advance 😄 !
These funds would be certainly used for:
purposes of newer articles e.g. test of some tool/device and giving a review on it.
for help to my mom 🧕 financially to keep the house on running 💸 smoothly (currently I'm before applying at the uni and well I'm jobless 📂, so I'm sort of parasite 🦠 some of you might think, but I help as much as I can to take the burden off of her 🫂).
purchase of new equipment 🖥️ to my lab 🧪 aka. room ⛺ for potential co-worker to have workplace and cool experience of working together and perhaps start working jointly 👥 on some project that could then turn into a start-up and potential business (I would never forget the people, who would put a trust in me and help me 🤧).
Perhaps in the future I will grow to a bigger brand 🕶️ and all of the sudden I will start selling hoodies, t-shirts 👕, caps 🧢 with some themes of mine, we will see 😁 On this moment on I want you to make qualitative articles, so we go slowly to the core part of the article now on.
Additionally, as you could see this article will be only about Payments and I excluded AI from the article. You could ask:
Luftie, wtf is going on ? Why can't you keep one plan and stick to it ?
Grasp you chair and hold it thightly.....
Because my articles are good and long, bitch ;D If I kept Payments and AI format, this article would so long like distance from 🌏 Earth to exit of our galaxy 🛸 ! Now I reduced it to a length similar to a distance from Hicksville in South-Portugal 🇵🇹 to Shenzhen 🇨🇳
So I guess you're fine with it and we can fasten ➰ our belts for this beautiful and thriving just like Rust 🦀 on your car journey !.... I mean article, I mean..... JUST SHUT UP and read it 😘
Shout out to Rustaceans 😅 !
Article Navigation Guide
This article will have multiple sections so you can skip to what interest you the most, so in order to e.g. just find a part of article that is interesting to you here's the overview:
-- Cash
--- Intro, Good Web3 Practices + SURPRISE 🤩
---- # Blockchain 101 explanation
---- # 1 Rule
----- Detailed Cryptographic Explanation of nuances
---- # 2 Rule + Surprise 🥳
---- # 3 Rule
---- # 4 Rule
---- # 5 Rule
---- # 6 Rule
---- # 7 Rule
---- # 8 Rule
---- # 9 Rules
--- Privacy Coins
--- Other Coins
-- Virtual, Prepaid and Physical Cards with no-kyc
-- Alternative forms of payment
DISCLAIMER ⚠️
The presented content does not encourage to commit any actions towards using such solutions, I do not take any responsibility if you use one of those tools and loose money. It's not a financial advice, the article has rather an informative and educational purpose.
The article has not been sponsored by any companies presented in the juxtaposition of card providers or the blockchain organisation.
All opinions on the products are personal, not influenced by any forms of incentive.
The article in some paragraphs comprises writers personal, subjective opinions, experiences, that can include curse-words, if you're sensitive to language used, please don't take things personally or don't read it at all.
Payments
First of all why might you want to commit transactions privately ? Well that's because:
you would not like to get questions from some financial institutions in your country where do you have the money from to commit the transaction ?
you would not like to have an blocked (bank) account all of the sudden and frozen funds on the account.
you want to diversify your risk when it comes to payments, because you are afraid that your bank-account can be suspended and funds frozen due to fake allegations or any other reasons.
you don't want your government or any entity besides you and the other party to know about the transaction.
you would like to make finally a utility tool out of crypto instead of just hodling it and waiting for moon time :D
There are yet other reasons why you might like to make transactions privately, I could make a whole article about, but it would be too longish. So now let's discuss the payment options !
1. Cash
I guess there will be no wonder at all if I say that the most private way of committing a transaction is apparently Cash !
It's of course not digital form of payment, however cash enables you to pay whenever and wherever you would like to and you have the certainty that those funds will not be stolen. Cash is untrackable, basically government does not track where each coin, banknote is, so paying cash is anonymous and you do not live any digital or trackable fingerprint afterwards.
You could use cash however in multiple cases for digital I will name later.
Tradeoffs: Large amount of cash can be tough to transport, you could not transport such large amount of cash in the airport and you would need to report it. But not only in the airport, if police would stop you and open the trunk they prolly detain you, even if it's not determined by the law of certain country that you're guilty. Also cash can be lost, so you need to take care of the banknotes so you don't loose them.
Cryptocurrencies
As I'm really deep into this industry and I know the standards and behaviors that are common for this industry (similiar to other indurstries) and because all of the ways to pay privately will be almost only rely on crypto-currency in terms of replenishment procedure, issuance fee payment and independent payment procedure (meaning you will not have to rely on another person).
At first I want to emphasize, that cryptocurrencies are still considered as high-risk assets due to their volatility, low capitalisation.
You might think how come, though Bitcoin was lately for 128k $ ?!
It all comes to math and the market cap, the maximal market cap of cryptocurrencies was about 4.28 Trillion Dollars (October 2025), now it's about 2.6 Trillion Dollars, so you see that the market cap gone severely down more than 30% in 6 months, which is fast in comparison to traditional markets.
Also to depict the size of cryptocurrencies in juxtaposition with other markets. At the time of writing the article, Global Real Estate Market is worth about 4 trillion Dollars, Total Gold value is about 33 trillion Dollars, Silver is 4.26 Trillion dollars. It's projected that cryptocurrencies have share of ~2% in Global GDP. So we talk about really microscopic market, compared to the other markets like Stocks or Real Estates.
My take is that cryptocurrencies always will be treated such more of speculative, more volatile than other advanced markets and lesser regulated asset than the others, it always will be such market (unless people understand not to purchase stupid flashy coins, without reading the details and investing in another 100 shitcoins).
One should educate themselves to know what they are doing, before taking any action related to this market whether it goes about first purchase or entering this market should be backed by education.
Here I will provide a guide for beginners with crypto, covering the security, not financial rules. So that regardless of who you are, this will fit everyone.
Because not every developer and especially not every person is acquainted with cryptocurrencies at all. Let's now jump into the details.
Intro, Good Web3 Practices + SURPRISE 🤩
What is Blockchain ?
Blockchain in a short description is a type of distributed system 🌐, a decentralized ledger 📄 of transactions, distributed over many computers that running a specific computer program, these computers are called nodes, maintained by variously named, depending on the consensus protocol the network operates on maintainers (people), for the most popular cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) it would be miners, for Ethereum it would be validators.
For the rest of the explanation I will stick to the word miners. The Miners are giving their computational power to the network to validate transactions on the network made by the networks participants.
Why do miners keep the network on going ?
Their incentive to keep validating the transaction and supplying the network with their computational power is trying to solve computational puzzle 🧩 for something called block, which is basically a stack of transactions, which is pushed ➡️ in certain intervals (e.g. In Bitcoin it's 10 minutes or in Ethereum 12 seconds) to the blockchain as a sealed registered, irreversible change of the balances of network users, if they are sound with previous block states.
What makes cryptocurrencies special 🤔 ?
It offers trustless transactions, and it's durability. Meaning that one Node (a miners devide) that has the last state enables the others to reclaim the state and restart the entire process of validating transactions and mining based on the last state. Also if one Node is down, it does not break the entire network, because as it's said it's decentralized, so there is no central entity governing the network, what complete opposite of current bank system that collapses after one bank's systems shut off.
How big is the reward ?
The reward depends on each blockchain, however in Bitcoin Network, for solving the puzzle correctly, currently the prize is 3.125 BTC + fees from the transactions per block. The prize is algorithmicaly determined to be slashed every 4 years on a halve (that pertains only Bitcoin Network, the more blockchains, the more approaches) which is also named halving. It's designed so because the amount of Bitcoins possible to exist is only 21 million of coins, currently the supply is near to 20 million, thus Bitcoin has the got the name of digital gold, at least so called in mainstream.
What is cryptocurrency ?
It's more trickier with cryptocurrency to explain, because they split on coins and tokens.
- Coins, which are the native currency of the network for miners to get their reward in and for network participants to transfer the coins between each other.
And there are tokens, that just programs/code (in the industry called smart-contracts) deployed on the blockchain that should imitate a coin and should have feature just like a coin has. There are of course various types of tokens, but this goes beyond the frames of the article. For more knowledge, I advice doing personal searches.
Where to learn on Web3 ?
I could write about cryptocurrencies more, but for more knowledge about cryptocurrencies I highly encourage to read a book like:
or visit this website and watch the materials, I really enjoyed videos made by that guy (shout out again !)
For those who desire to start with web3 programming, here I can recommend checking out Cyfrin Updraft. They have a ton of courses on web3 programming from smart-contracts for beginners to more advanced topics like work of Uniswap etc.
I also highly advice to contact people or join a crypto community, who already have experience in the market and will help you go into the world step by step, if you're a freshman.
Other useful source of knowledge for new and intermediately advanced people who want to broaden their knowledge, would be to join events and conferences and get in touch with people you are interested in, whether a developer, investor, VC, don't hesitate, just talk to them. So have I got my first work as an ambassador in an RWA start-up I worked for 4 months long.
And of course, there will be as always conceited morons 🤵, who think that if they have a sport-car 🏎 or SUV car 🚙 in leasing and are earning 100k$+ annually, that they are rulers of the world 🫅, but to be honest although those people are indeed a significant fraction of web3, but you should not be discouraged to learn about Web3 only because of them.
So now, as I explained the basics of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, I can explain couple of good practices for the security and privacy of the funds you have. The advice will not contain the financial advice, rather how one should operate in this market in order not to loose their funds.
Rules in Web3 to follow
1 Rule
NEVER SHARE YOUR PRIVATE KEY / SEEDS / MNEMONIC
What it means is that you should not give the access to your crypto-wallet to anyone/anything (website, person), unless it's a verified software for a wallet like Metamask, Phantom. It's more of marketing slogan, because what they mean with keys is your seed phrase more known as mnemonic (12-24 words, that are giving you access to your wallet).
And now Mr. Anonymous 🥷 will come with his educational and technical explanation 🤓 of what is the difference between mnemonic and private-key, public key and address (I read Mastering Ethereum 5 times, somewhere I have to utilize this knolwedge). It's fully optional so if you want to go to next rule, skip it.
Detailed explanation of wallet related terms
All blockchains base on one type of cryptography Public-Key Cryptography (also known as asymmetric cryptography).
Essentially, it's feature is based on the fact that users do not have to share the same key for secure interactions with each other (like sending transaction) as in case of symmetric cryptographic algorithms like 3DES, ChaCha, Salsa20, Trivium, AES-256 and more gibberish names you won't probably understand (and you don't have to now). You actually might recall AES and ChaCha from last article mentioned.
I will explain to you how users can interact with each other on chain, because a lot of tutorials actually screw up explaining this and it's because of misunderstanding of how public key cryptography works.
In order to understand how public key cryptography works in blockchain properly, I need to explain 2 concepts. In blockchain mostly often 2 schemes of PKC are used:
- Elliptic Curve Cryptography - for key generation
- Diffie Hellman Key Exchange - for key-exchange as the name implies, but primarily it also manages the key generation
Now some of you might scratch your head and recall the previous lines that THE PKC WAS ABOUT NOT USING THE SAME KEY !
And you're quite right, nerdy boy/lady. For being alert, you won ticket to become a cricket 🦗🤣 (just kidding)
What is then the Diffie Hellman Key-Exchange ?
It's a mathematically defined scheme designed for key generation and exchange of them, without creation one asymmetric key for interactions. For public key cryptography protocols to allow participants to communicate, which security relies on Discrete Logarithm Problem.
Luftie, WTF IS DISCRETE LOGARITHM PROBLEM ?
Discrete Logarithm Problem - is a mathematical problem based on difficulty of inversion of exponentiation in finite cyclic groups, the main matter to understand that, for DHKE protocols it is easy to generate the keys, but if you want to invert them it is not feasible given current computer powers (I do not take quantum risk into account, there are of course risks of Shor Alogirthm, that poses the threat to Public Key Cryptography. I will not focus on it in this article).
DHKE Framework
Now in order DHKE to work, it needs 2 elements for set-up also
called domain parameters:
The large prime p - it will be a base for generation of every new key
The primitive element also called generator (I will define it as
g) - to define the size of the finite cyclic group
The Key Generation and Key Exchange Framework
Setup:
- 2 parties willing to communicate with each other without third parties
- The large prime number p as a base
- The primitive element / finite cyclic group generator g for defining the size of the group
Now both party, I'll name them A and B have compute their private and then public keys.
Now what do both parties A and B do ?
For Party A:
The private key a is chosen, such that a belongs to {2, p-2} set of elements.
Then they calculate the public-key by performing action below
A = p^a mod g
- You could ask why isn't the group {0, p} ? It's to avoid results zero values and to ensure there are non-trivial values. A private key of 0 would mean that an individual has no influence on the key exchange process, effectively providing no security. This approach helps prevent predictable outputs and potential attacks, ensuring the robustness of the key exchange.
The same action is performed for B party with only change of the variable names
The private key b is chosen, such that b belongs to {2, p-2} set of elements.
Then they calculate the public-key by performing action below
B = p^b mod g
Now, to allow both parties to interact with each other one party needs to send their public key to the other party and then the receiver party signs the received key with their private key and so has the common key been established without a need of chosen symmetric key, so improving the security of our .
If you're still confused, here a Screenshot from book "Understanding Cryptography From Established Symmetric and Asymmetric Ciphers to Post-Quantum Algorithms, Second Edition", written by Christof Paar, Jan Pelzl and Tim Güneysu.
It's a great introduction to cryptography and definitely worth buying. If you want to learn about cryptography however, but not want to spend money, Professor Christof Paar (that I personally wish that one day I met with him irl) and ignited my passion to cryptography even stronger, has a playlist with lectures on cryptography essentials, so click the link to check it out.
Elliptic Curve Explanation
Elliptic Curve Cryptography (for short ECC) - is a scheme of PKC and just like DHKE, it relies on DLP (Discrete Logarithm Problem).
An elliptic curve itself is a special type of polynomial equation that can be presented on Cartesian Plane just like circle can be, by equaltion of x^2 + y^2 = r^2 and it generates a certain group of solutions, elements that the solution has to be in.
The difference is for ECs that they are defined over a finite field and not real numbers, mostly it's prime field where all arithmetic is done modulo a prime p. The formula for elliptic curve looks as following
y^2 is equivalent to x^3 + a * x + b mod p
There are conditions yet to be fulfilled for a valid elliptic curve:
- p > 3
- 4 * a^3 + 27 * b^2 != 0 mod p And it comes together with an imaginary point of infinity, which goes beyond the scope of the article.
How is the public key generated in ECC ?
The formula for generation of the key is much easier on the first glimpse than what was presented in DHKE. The formula is
pubK = G * privKey
Where G is a base point and the final public key is indeed also a point with coordinates of x and y.
However it's not as easy as it might seem to be calculated and it involves elliptic curve arithmetic and usage of add-double algorithm, which goes beyond the scope of this article.
** For those sneaky guys, who are alert, might say it's easily breakable, just divide The e.g. PubK x coordinate with base point's x and you got private key. And all might be cool, except the fact that ** there is no such operation as division in modular arithmetic** on which modular cryptography bases. There are only addition, substraction, multiplication, inversion.
ECC Arithmetics
Just for those who are curious and those who want to understand the workflow in a deeper level of how Elliptic Curve Cryptography Arithmetic works to generate a public key. There are actually 2 main actions that are performed on elliptic curves and it is adding (for 2 different points) and doubling (for the same points). Now how does is it performed on the curve ?
I allow my self to quote the explanations from the Professor Paar's Book:
Point Addition P+Q This is the case where we compute R = P + Q and P != Q. The construction works as follows: Draw a line through P and Q and obtain a
third point of intersection between the elliptic curve and the line. Mirror this third
intersection point in the x-axis. This mirrored point is, by definition, the point R.
Below you can see how the addition is performed on a curve:
Point Doubling P+P This is the case where we compute P+Q but P = Q. Hence, we can write R = P + P = 2P. We need a slightly different construction here. We draw the tangent line through P and obtain a second point of intersection between
this line and the elliptic curve. We mirror the point of the second intersection in
the x-axis. This mirrored point is the result R of the doubling.
Below I provide the depiction of how doubling is performed on a curve together with formulas to calculate the points.
Additionally, it's worth mentioning that ECC provides the same level of security as discrete logarithm systems with considerably shorter operands (approximately 256–512 bits vs. 2048–4096 bits).
It's on average twice as slow compared to symmetric cryptographic algorithms, but it provides convenience, independence and facilitated way to set-up a common secret key without relying on the protocol, because de facto we are responsible for this key generation, having our private key.
So to summarize: Blockchains use DHKE for key exchange only and ECC for key generation which they next exchange in order to set up and mutual key for communication. Below you can see mathematical notation from Professor Paar's Book:
Seed ? Private Key ? Public Key ? Mnemonic ? What is different about them ?
Now I hope you survived my technical, mathematical, gibberishy explanations and now I can tell you what are the differences according to the terms.
Seed phrase/Mnemonic - A seed phrase or mnemonic is a list of 12 to 24 words that is generated to grant access to a cryptocurrency wallet. The generation process involves taking a private key and adding a checksum to it, which effectively increases the bit length from 132 bits to 264 bits. The resulting data is hashed, and the output is split into segments, each with 11 bits. Since there are 2048 words in the mnemonic dictionary (typically derived from the English language), the segments can be mapped effectively to create meaningful words. Some cryptocurrencies, like Monero, use a longer mnemonic of 25 words for additional security.
Private Key - a cryptographic key used to sign transactions on a blockchain. It grants full control over the associated cryptocurrency funds and must be kept secret at all costs. If someone gains access to your private key, they can manipulate your wallet and transfer your assets without your permission. The private key is a long, random string of numbers and letters, and losing it means losing access to the funds tied to that key.
Seed - it's essentially a hash of the private key combined with a checksum. It serves as a master key that can be expanded into multiple private keys, facilitating the management of a wallet containing various cryptocurrencies. The seed is usually derived from or represented by the mnemonic phrase, allowing users to retrieve their wallet through the mnemonic if needed.
Public Key - derived from the private key through a cryptographic algorithm. While the private key must remain confidential, the public key can be shared openly with others. It acts as an identifier associated with a wallet on the blockchain. The public key is necessary for receiving funds, as it allows others to send cryptocurrency to your wallet.
Address - a short string derived from the public key, specifically taking the least significant 20 bits (at least for EVM chains) of it and hashing the result. This address serves as your wallet's public identifier on the blockchain, where others can send cryptocurrency. Because addresses are shorter and formatted for easier sharing, they provide a convenient way for users to send and receive funds without exposing the entire public key.
After this explanation you should no longer confuse address with public key. Once you make a transaction you pass an address to your wallet not public key.
Personal Story on the rule violation 🥲
It's the most important in my opinion and often forgotten about rule, and I actually also fell victim phishing attack, where I violated this rule.
It was back 2024 as I've been developing my start-up 🛠️
I regularly invested my money in stocks from 2022/23 in stocks and Bitcoin (only bitcoin back then), back then crypto were yet before hitting 100k and one evening as I've been seeking people who are working or are from Switzerland to connect with them, I joined a discord channel of an Swiss Cheese Exchange, where I fell a phishing scam attack because of an fake bot announcement about the exchange collaboration with Opensea 🌏. The website looked neatly at that time (I had no clue what Opensea is back then).
I wanted to see/test out how to mint an NFT, I clicked the button to connect my wallet with the website. However it turned out that the popup was coming from the website (it prolly was some shit of absolute position in css or so) and I passed there my seed because it has shown I had no connection of my ledger wallet with metamask.
I was then shown on their website that something went wrong with the wallet connection and I gave up (it was late night and I was exhausted checking out the internet after work on my project), at the next morning I noticed this:
I invested back then about 4k $, so if I were to sell it at the peak or a bit below like 120k $ / 1 BTC. I do not blame anyone, because it is my fault only I didn't fact-check.
I would have earnt about 210% + on the investment. Of course, now one can only contemplate, but apparently I don't regret I lost those funds. Of course it is a loss, but that also made me realise to set certain rules when it comes to my day to day behaviour.
Rule Number 2 + SURPRISE 🤩
This rule is namely to grab oneself a hardware wallet also known as cold wallet, why is cold wallet such a big deal ?
Let's REALLY shortly explain it. There are 2 types of wallets in web3, Software wallets like Metamask or Phantom that are so called hot wallets and are connected to the internet always. And there are cold wallets which are hardware devices that are needed to approve certain transaction ones you want to perform it in cold wallet's software and so noone can move funds from your wallet if they both don't know your mnemonic and do not have access to your hardware device to validate the transaction.
Cold wallet would be a perfect solution if you have funds that you would not like to loose, like personal investments, savings etc. Hot wallet's I'd rather use it for some daily transactions like below 500$ valued wallets to prevent from bigger losses.
Why to bother really about Cold Wallets ?
In case of software wallets like Metamask or Phantom, the vulnerability lies in the fact that it's always connected to the internet and there might be many cases where you could fell a victim of scam or your keys could be captured by a hacker. Also one never knows if metamask will not be hacked and so one.
The most known companies offering the wallets are
Ledger, Trezor, Keystone Wallet and for sure many more companies.
My personally first crypto wallet was Ledger. However due to many controversies with this wallet provider and uncertainties about security of my funds, and the kidnapping of CEO. I thought on buying a new wallet, but always lacked time to do it finally and there was always something more important to be done.
Here you can see what such wallet looks like (It is jus disasambled by me, no worries you will get a full one :D)
SURPRISE TIME !
Surprisingly, my posts got enough visibility, to get an email with an enquiry about partnership from OneKey company.
And after my research, answering of my questions and check of the company, I decided to take up the collaboration and I have a big pleasure to announce, that I have a partnership with OneKey and with my promo-code: Luftie, you got 10% discount.
They are open-source, so I appreaciate the transparency. They are based in Chin, backed by big names but independent and were not involved in any actions with governments like passing data or data breaches, in 2023 there was an vulnerability found that was actually a hardware bug than the firmware, here you can read on it.
The Model of the wallet, I received is OneKey Classic 1S and it looks as above. I have to confess that not the wallet triggered an impression on myself but rather the quality of the box and how well the wallet was packed with add-ons. Shammy leather inside, elegant box, security tapes to strip off to open up the box + cool stickers and equipment like sheets for your mnemonic 😁 and that's for 79$, they have shown care of every detail and took care of customer experience, whereas my Ledger Nano S Plus was bought for about 80$+ and was just a box with set-up but low quality e.g. stickers box.
The wallet has bluetooth support, so when I was about to confirm the transaction, the connection with e.g. PC is not necessary. This has it's convenience pros, but the one con is that there are cases already that via BLE there were malware spread over AI robots performed, so this is a thing to consider if you want to use it.
The things that only caused for me a bit of issues was that I could not connect my wallet with my Desktop PC directly, because it doesn't have USB-C gateway and when I used the adapter even with bluetooth on, it could not find the wallet and I had to import the wallet via transfering via QR-code.
The other things is the Flatpak-version, because it caused crashes on my Linux devices (at least Desktop) so it would be cool if they would have fixed it and also make dedicated versions for distributions specifically like .deb files, so that I could attach the wallet's software to my panel and access it easily.
They have support for all Operating Systems and what I appreciate an APK file, so that you can download the software from the website and it matters to me, due to google's psychopathic conquerence wet dreams to make u use only apps from official store. Again I recommend everyone to go to Keep Android Open Website !
And they have even extensions for chroemium based browsers, so you can use it in Brave, I would be more than happy however to see Firefox support as well.
The Wallet has also a far more advanced Defi activity-participation detection outside of the wallet's software. So it displays more balances and helps you track state of your defi activity and investments like staking, lending or liquidity. Which Ledger does not.
Overall
After using the wallet for a week, I can highly recommend this, it's far better than what I experienced with Ledger. As a side-note OneKey wallets support also Trezor-modes, if one would be curious about this. So if you search for a new wallet or you start with crypto and are about to purchase your first hardware wallet, OneKey is a very good option in my opinion, especially with my code 🥰
3 Rule, Be Wary of Phishing Scams
Scammers often create fake websites or emails that mimic legitimate platforms. Always double-check URLs and avoid clicking on links from unsolicited messages. Educating yourself about common phishing signs can significantly reduce risk.
The best solution would be to use Browser like Brave and Metamask extension that support scam detection on bigger scale.
4 Rule, Understand the Basics of Blockchain
Familiarize yourself with how blockchain works, including concepts like decentralization and consensus protocols. This foundational knowledge helps you make informed decisions about which projects to invest in and understand potential risks.
5 Rule, Research Projects Thoroughly
Before investing in any cryptocurrency, conduct thorough research regarding its technology, team, community support, and use case. Understanding fundamentals helps to identify potentially fraudulent projects. Be doubtful by default about the projects.
6 Rule, Be Aware of Market Volatility
The crypto market is highly volatile, with prices fluctuating significantly in short periods. Prepare for emotional reactions to market swings; consider setting stop-loss limits or using dollar-cost averaging when investing.
7 Rule, Beware of Fake or Scam Airdrops
Airdrops can seem appealing but may mask scams. Always validate the legitimacy of the project offering airdrops by checking their official channels. Never provide your private keys to claim an airdrop.
I myself have plenty of scams ERC-20 tokens and NFT-721, here an example of one pointed out in the red circle.
8 Rule, Understand Transaction Fees
Different blockchains have varying transaction fees based on network demand. Familiarizing yourself with these costs can help in choosing the right time to make transactions without losing excessive funds to fees.
9 Rule, Backup Your Wallets
Regularly backup your wallet data and store it in a safe place. This ensures that you can recover your funds if your device fails. Create multiple copies and consider encrypting sensitive information for added security.
NOW, enough of the stuff and into details of private payment options we go !
Privacy Coins
First option of private payments with cryptocurrencies are indeed those coins, whose base on blockchains with enhanced privacy algorithms. And this section will be about privacy coins indeed.
** Important ⚠️ : In 2027 European Union is about to implement a "ban" 🤣 for privacy coins. Meaning from all the exchanges operating in EU, the privacy coins like Monero (XMR), DASH or ZTrash 🗑... eh sorry, ZCash will be delisted from the exchanges.
That's why one would need a VPN, noone should decide about what one would should what should not purchase when it comes to assets in which one allocates their money. And next article from this series will be indeed on VPNs. But as you will discover later on you might not need VPN 😉
1. Monero
The golden standard for privacy coins, the most well known, the best privacy coin, the most adopted privacy coin. So could Monero be described and here is what is it's features and why it's so good.
In the service kycnot.me you can find the services that accept monero and you can pay monero with.
What is making Monero so private ?
Ring signatures - are the foundation. When you send Monero, your transaction is mixed with multiple other transactions from the blockchain—typically 16 decoys by default. To an observer, it's impossible to tell which transaction in the ring is actually yours. The ring signature proves you authorized the payment without revealing which of your past outputs funded it.
Stealth addresses - handle the receiving side. Instead of having one public address where everyone can see your incoming transactions, Monero generates a unique one-time address for each transaction.
*RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions) * - hides the amounts. Without RingCT, ring signatures would still leak transaction values, allowing someone to statistically determine which transaction in the ring was real by process of elimination.
Privacy guarantee: All three layers are mandatory and automatic on every Monero transaction. No user choice required. The sender, receiver, and amount are all hidden from the blockchain.
HOWEVER ! Despite the strong cryptography, Monero is not perfectly anonymous in practice. The vulnerability is not the on-chain protocol, but metadata leaks: IP addresses, exchange deposit/withdrawal timing, wallet fingerprints, and behavioral patterns. Thus next article on VPNs will be adviced to read.
2. ZCash
This cryptocurrency seems to play as "the second best", but as already Micheal Sailor said: "THERE IS NO SECOND BEST !", this pertains privacy coins.
Personally I never owned ZTrash and never will do, because it's not genuine Privacy Coin as it does not enable privacy by default, last year it's been pushed with marketing everywhere and was backed by Grayscale VC in my opinion only to suck the wallets of investors dry and generate a narrative.
ZTrash..ekhm, sorry ZCash privacy layer relies on Zero Knowledge Proofs Cryptography, namely a scheme of SNARKs (zero-knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge, don't fucking worry idk myself yet what it exactly means 😁, but therefore I'm here to learn and educate)
A zk-SNARK is a mathematical proof that lets you prove a statement is true without revealing any information about the statement itself. The proof is "non-interactive"—you don't need back-and-forth communication to prove something is valid.
This is theoretically more sophisticated than Monero's ring signatures. The cryptography is stronger. However, ZCash has a fatal flaw: privacy is not mandatory.
Privacy guarantee: Only if you manually select shielded z-addresses. If you forget, your transaction is as traceable as Bitcoin. The cryptography is potentially stronger than Monero, but adoption is so weak that practical privacy is minimal.
Law enforcement reality: The privacy feature exists, but most people don't use it.
Thus for me it's ZTrash :D Imo, avoid if possible to use this spy-coin 😘
3. Canton - Privacy for Institutions
Canton is fundamentally different from traditional privacy coins because it's an institutional blockchain designed for enterprise use, not pseudonymous privacy. It employs a "need-to-know" privacy model built on the Daml smart contract language.
The key innovation is stakeholder-based privacy: only parties explicitly defined in a smart contract (signatories and observers) ever see the transaction data. The system separates "content" from "ordering"—your participant node stores and validates full, unencrypted contract data, but the sequencer (which orders transactions) only sees encrypted metadata and hashes.
How Private Are Payments ?
Payments on Canton are private from public observers and competitors, but not from regulators or law enforcement. Canton achieves sub-transaction privacy, meaning complex multi-party deals can be broken into smaller private pieces where only relevant parties see their portion.
For example, if Bank A and Bank B are swapping assets via a central bank, Bank A and Bank B can exchange private details that the Central Bank doesn't need to see. However, Canton is explicitly not anonymous-by-design.
Who Sees Your Payments ?
Only the parties you define in your smart contract see your transaction details. A regulator can be added as an "observer" at the contract level for real-time, read-only visibility without exposing data to the market.
The network uses techniques to mask metadata patterns to prevent traffic analysis. Since Canton requires institutional participation with identified entities (financial institutions, market infrastructure providers, etc.), there is no pseudonymity—your identity is known to the system.
Is Your Balance Publicly Visible ?
No. Your balance is private within your participant node. Canton uses Amulets (UTXO-style contracts) rather than account-based balances, and these follow the same privacy rules as any other asset on the network—only relevant parties can see them. Unlike public blockchains, there is no single global state visible to all.
Law Enforcement and Blockchain Analysis risks
Canton is highly traceable by design because it prioritizes regulatory compliance. The system includes built-in auditability and selective disclosure mechanisms. A law enforcement agency can be granted observer access to relevant contracts, providing complete visibility into those transactions.
Because Canton serves major financial institutions (Goldman Sachs, HSBC, BNP Paribas, DTCC, Deutsche Börse) that already maintain extensive AML/KYC compliance, the infrastructure for law enforcement investigation is inherent to the protocol. There have been no known cases of law enforcement struggling to identify Canton participants because the entire design assumes institutional identity and regulatory oversight.
4. MobileCoin - THE ACTUAL SECOND BEST !
If we were to estabilish some SECOND BEST PRIVACY COIN, Mobile Coin deserves it fully in my opinion, here is why.
MobileCoin combines technology from Monero and Stellar, using CryptoNote technology alongside zero-knowledge proofs to hide transaction details. The core cryptographic layers are:
Ring signatures (using MLSAG/CLSAG schemes) - hide which output is actually being spent, creating sender ambiguity
One-time addresses (similar to stealth addresses) - prevent linking outputs to a known recipient address
Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT) - conceal amounts while preserving verifiability
Intel SGX - secure enclaves running on validator nodes to protect transaction processing.
Transactions are validated in SGX secure enclaves using a consensus protocol adapted from Stellar's Federated Byzantine Agreement. Everything is written in Rust, separating it technically from Monero while maintaining similar privacy principles.
How Private Are Payments?
Payments are cryptographically unlinkable on the blockchain—blockchain analysts cannot connect sender to receiver from transaction data alone. The transaction recipients are hidden through one-time addresses that cannot be linked back to the recipient's actual wallet address. Amounts are hidden using RingCT. However, Signal (the messaging app integrating MobileCoin) itself can see behavioral metadata: who you're sending to, when, and how frequently, though not the transaction content itself. This is a critical distinction between on-chain privacy (strong) and metadata privacy (limited).
Who Sees Your Payments?
On the blockchain level: nobody can identify the sender or receiver from transaction data alone. The recipient's identity is protected by one-time addresses, and the sender is obscured within a ring of possible signers. However, Signal knows the timing, frequency, and recipient patterns of your financial behavior, even though it cannot see the actual amounts or transaction content. This means Signal could provide this behavioral metadata to authorities if compelled.
Is Your Balance Publicly Visible?
No. Your balance is completely private. Only the blockchain contains UTXOs and key images; no addresses or balances are published. However, anyone with your private view key (which you can share for auditing purposes) can see your incoming transactions.
Law Enforcement and Blockchain Analysis
MobileCoin transactions themselves cannot be traced via blockchain analysis because of the cryptographic protections. However, law enforcement can compel Signal for transaction metadata (timing, patterns, recipient information).
The weakness is not the coin itself but the application layer: Signal's servers maintain records of who sends to whom and when. Unlike true decentralized systems, MobileCoin transactions on Signal go through Signal's infrastructure, creating a record even if the blockchain itself is private.
There have been no major publicized cases of law enforcement successfully de-anonymizing MobileCoin transactions on the blockchain itself, but this is largely because MobileCoin has limited adoption and is primarily used within Signal.
However when it comes to an risk of Signal revealing some information about your balance or wallet whatsoever, I guess (check it on your own) they will have everything encrypted and agencies will have troubles detecting detecting the person anyways and likely will not succeed.
My take on privacy and psuedo-privacy coins
For the privacy and security of yourself, stick to Monero and MobileCoin and avoid usage of pseudo-private protocols. In time of October 2025 - January 2026, there was a huge boom on privacy coins market, there were new protcols like GHOST or MIDNIGHT announced and the narrative was pushed strongly to drain people's wallets and it ended up as always with a huge dump.
One important thing we should understand is that, those assets will be volatile and we have to embrace it and have no remorse when e.g. we paid for something with XMR and the price of XMR raised, then such feeling of "Oh fuck, I could have waited to pay less" happens to everyone, but think of it as you would e.g. purchase the headphones for 100$ and after 2 months after purchase, then the price dropped to 85$, would you have remorse of having spent to much ? Well likely not, because you enjoy the headphones technology work and it was worth the price and you live further, no big deal.
Where to but crypto-anonymously ?
Of course if you would like to have cryptocurrencies and you have only fiat, you first need to purchase crypto obviously. But how can you purchase anonymously ? Here I have found approaches you could do.
P2P Exchanges
These types of exchanges are connect you directly with a person who wants to sell their assets or want to buy some assets, instead of automating it like Centralized Exchanges usually do, disabling you from direct contact. In order to make a trade however often a deposit is needed in some currency, in order to allow you to betray the seller.
And other one, that I found out about at the NBX event I was and it's prolly more focused sadly only on polish customers but Spot.Club seems to be interesting. It's not working yet, but it is about to be launched.
Also there was an CEX that offers privacy preserving solution namely Kanga, a polish exchange offers Kanga-Local, where you can meet in person with the local person and purchase/sell your crypto.
It has it's pros such as possibility to connect with the person and make a relationship, become friends and do something together, but the trade-off here would be the fees to be paid.
As it will turn out, PRIVACY COMES AT A PRICE ! Price in terms of finances, convenience, social-acceptance (normies might treat you as weirdo) and other layers of where you would need to pay the price of being different.
The other risk is that the person might be undercover agent or officer that could gather data on you and accuse you and all of the sudden ruin part of your life, it happens, it's not often but it's good to keep it mind.
I mention it because there are far more cases of innocent people, who try to keep themselves away from government or they are preaching their opinions that are not complimentary towards surrveilance-apparatus of governments.
To emphasize it: I'm not supporting criminal activities, I condemn and despise people performing any illegal action, but I condemn even more "legal" actions that violate freedom and privacy of regular people.
ATMs
On the time of writing there are yet places where there is a limit upto 1000 Euro value transaction to deposit/withdraw from the ATM, so checkout if it's available in your country and if there are any distributors of Crypto ATMs.
Exchange Points
In Exchange Points (ger. Wechselstube) you have the same opportunity in some countries in EU yet to make a deposit/withdrawal upto 1000$ value. But from June on it is about to be
Alternative Crypto
By design, cryptocurrencies were about to liberate people from banks and centralized institutions. By having an (pseudo)anonymous network, people were supposed to make transactions without a trust to the 3rd party and even the person we make the tx with.
And although the first one is partially achieved, the second one has been screwed up and currently if you go through KYC on an exchange in any form you can at most remain pseudo-anonymous, and if you do full KYC then it's just as though a woman (or man, coz people might squeek in the comments that I'm misogynist) would say they care about their privacy, but walks out in transparent clothes outside, hope you get the point.
However, as mentioned earlier. There STILL (26.04.2026) are in some places options available to remain private without identification requirement.
Most blockchains are transparent, therefore by chain-analysis law-enforcement can easily determine which wallets are yours together with CEXes support.
And here are suggestions how to preserve anonymity in public blockchains (use EVM-chains, Bitcoin or Solana for convenience):
Coin mixing services
Mixing or tumbling services pool transactions from multiple users, breaking the link between input and output addresses. Services like Tornado Cash (though now sanctioned in some jurisdictions) or CoinJoin for Bitcoin shuffle transactions together, making it harder to trace funds to their original source.
Address separation
Create new addresses for each transaction rather than reusing the same wallet address. This prevents someone from linking multiple transactions to a single entity, though sophisticated chain analysis can still correlate addresses with patterns.
Use multiple wallets
Maintain separate wallets for different purposes (trading, savings, donations) and avoid sending funds between them in traceable ways.
Non-custodial solutions
Self-custody with hardware wallets means no exchange holds your identity data, though KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements at on/off-ramps still create on-chain entry points traceable to you.
VPN and Tor
Route your blockchain activity through privacy tools like Tor or a VPN to hide your IP address from node operators and observers monitoring network traffic.
Non-KYC CEXes
If you have already some crypto and you want to trade it or purchase e.g. coins that are not available in P2P and you want to use CEX, there are CEXes that allow you to use it without going through KYC, email is enough (use aliases ;D for that)
Such exchanges are e.g. HTX or CoinEx
Virtual & Physical Cards
The most desired option to pay and acquire goods is to have a card with some fiat. And here is where Visa/Mastercard Prepaid Virtual or even Physical cards come into play. This comes with certain risks which I will describe, but for now I want to focus on the products specifically.
I just want to emphasize the fact that it took 4 days, with 4 days in a row sleeping on average 3/4 hours a day to make this ranking/list. A lot of other articles on the internet are outdated and most of the products turnt into KYC-required cards or were just non-KYC the same as ZEBEC is.
There are a lot of scammy non-kyc cards providers, that after linking you to the provider to activate the card, they require KYC there. One of such companies is ZEBEC (I still wait for my refund 10$ 😘), that does not require KYC from you on their side, but when you get your activation token with link to third-party, either pass the ID or you got rekt.
That of course is nicely inserted in terms/privacy policy in one of their points:
- Third-Party Services & Wallet Control Independent Partners Some features rely on independent third parties such as: Wallet providers Card issuers Payment processors Blockchain networks Staking providers Banking partners These companies operate separately from Zebec and may have their own rules. We do not control their operations and cannot guarantee their performance or availability.
And it occured in 10+ cases with other providers/softwares. The inferrance is simple, READ FUCKING TERMS AND POLICIES ! If not all, then filter it out to check parts you are interested in by searching for keywords (CRTL + F) and discover what the app legally is.
Laso.Finance
First there will be Laso Finance, probably mostly known No-KYC card issuer.
And they offer only one time load cards, so the cards are not reloadable, basically the amount you will be willing to spend, so much only you will be able to spend. And you cannot top-up again.
Laso Finance supports a lot of tokens from 3 chains EVM, Solana and Stellar (Beta).
They offer 3 types of cards:
US Only card - Basically a one-time load card, that you can attach to your digital wallet and pay for products. Payments are possible only in US.
-
Push to Card - This solution is not a card, rather a tool to replenish your debit card e.g. of your bank or any other card provider with cryptocurrencies without KYC. And usefull for crypto-offramp without KYC, recurring payments, ATMs withdrawals, etc.
- International - This card has the same terms as the US one, with the difference that it has a 3.8% from the initial card load (min 100$ - max 1000$)
Canada Card - The same card type as US and international one, enables you to spend canadian dollars without a fee.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Wise (Multi-Currency Card) | Push to Card | Internationalp (USD) | Canada |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deposit Fee | None | 4.8% | 3.8% | None |
| Transaction Fee | None | N/A | None | None |
| Withdrawal Fee | 14%, $10 min (if possible) | N/A | 14%, $10 min (if possible) | 14%, $10 min (if possible) |
| Minimum Order | $20 | $10 | $100 | $20 |
| Maximum Limit | $1,000 | $9,541.98 | $1,000 | $1,000 |
| Apple Pay | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google Pay | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reloadable | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Automatic Balance/Transaction on Updates | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| FX Rate | N/A | N/A | -2% | N/A |
| 3D Secure (3DS) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Daily Limit | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Monthly Limit | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
As in other cases, there is a list of countries where the product is not available, thus I advice to familiarize yourself with the list before purchasing. The list on the picture is trimmed.
Privacy Gateway
This is non-kyc virtual card provider but besides that they also have their bridge for any coins/tokens to purchase or sell XMR for other crypto, they have plenty of available tokens/coins you can exchange on. I will focus however only on the card this time here are the features that the card offers:
The card it's self that they offer is re-loadable and they have chosen a different approach when it comes to business model compared to the previous options. So you can actually reload this card as much as you would like to and enjoy private payments.
Card Features
✓VISA virtual card
✓Instant card issuance
✓No KYC, just name and email
✓$10,000 monthly limit
✓Tap to pay worldwide
✓Add to Google Pay
✓Apple Pay (coming soon)
✓3DS support
✓0% fee on USD purchases
✓3.5% loading fee
✓24/7 support
- No Samsung Wallet Support (checked personally :D)
And instead of some one-time payments they decided to run a subscription model, they charge 5$/mo (currently there is a discount from 10 $ dollars a month)
No other fees included.
How the Card Purchase Works — Step by Step
- This explanation comes from official PrivacyGateway.io Support, after contacting them.
Choose your amount
Pick one of the fixed denominations: $250, $500, or $1,000.Enter your details
• A name (this is what gets printed on the card — it doesn’t have to be your legal name)
• An email address
• Choose your payment method: XMR, BTC, LTC, SOL, USDT/USDC (POL) — and we keep adding more!Send crypto to your payment address
You get a unique deposit address and an exact crypto amount to send. The amount already includes the 3.5% service fee.Card is created after a few confirmations
Once your transaction gets enough blockchain confirmations, the system automatically creates your virtual Visa card. You receive a 32-character access hash — this is your only credential. There is no account, no password, no email login. Copy it and save it.The swap happens automatically
The system automatically converts your crypto to load the card in USD. You do nothing.Card goes active
Once the funds arrive, your card balance updates. You log into your dashboard with your access hash to see the balance.Reveal card details
Click “Reveal Card Details” to see your full card number, expiry, and CVV — and you’re ready to use it!
I have to express my gratefulness to the Privacy Gateway Support, who has given me possibility to test out the card on my own and check, if the card will be supported by Samsung Wallet (as I decided to test my setup for private payments): Samsung + No SIM-CARD + dumb email + digital wallet (optionally VPN with thetered internet from my other one) as shown below (yes I glued over the cameras, lol):
And for that money as a genuine tech-jounalist I grabbed my free meal, so thanks Leo 🫡 for giving me the opportunity. So did my meal look like, absolute aristocracy 🙌
Btw do not allege me with being bribed, because if the product would not work or the support would not be so transparent about helpful, I would not put it on the list.
My Take : This is a very low-budget, reasonable option to get started private payments with and to use on a daily basis for expenditures. I personally will soon think about using their product.
Goblin Card
I have to confess at first, I was skeptical about this product because of the fact that it's the only PHYSICAL card that is non-kyc. And you might also have such an impression ? But therefore I gone and asked questions about the details of how the products work, I watch materials available and research the internet and not blindly copy paste from Gepetto-AI or any other Clueless Models (just kidding, lol).
I also faced a bit of behavior, words from people in the group, that I was not about to expect and they weren't nice experiences. However, with the support of Goblin Cards, we jointly clarified everything and all my doubts got resolved. Shortly describing the company, it is a company based in Mexico, with small team, originally being and OTC exchange transforming into an card provider, which as the founder said was natural move.
People might yet be skeptical about the location, but a lot of that has been explained in the podcast by the founder (check it out).
Really interesting stuff to learn about the financial system. The names of the systems like SPEI or Archus caught my interest and I will definitely read about it in my free time). The company attended Monerotopia event in Mexico and intend to be active in that space as well.
I must say that my suspicion was wrong, already after I watched the interview, I had an impression of being wrong. I mean the founder was too transparent and shared so many details about how their product works, that some stupid big-tech CEOs would not share. So I decided to ask directly and clarify it.
How is this legally compliant ?
It bases on physical reloadable PREPAID mastercard cards. The PREPAID adjective to this card makes the situation turn 180 degrees. Because if it was a regular card just like offered by Revolut or any other FinTech, then it would demand KYC/AML.
However, due to the fact that it bases on prepaid cards, just like those one can purchase in a mall, gas-station next to gift cards. It makes it fit completely different category of cards. That's how I understood the compliance.
And the fact that it's both reloadable and prepaid, makes it work and there are people who are actually satisfied with their products on SimpleX or Telegram chat and they offer a great support. Shout out to the Goblin Cards support for collaborating to make this article exist 😎
And to me, it makes sense and I really support such initiatives. If there is a grain yet of the free market and this approach is not forbidden, then it's allowed and noone should be treating them as criminals or shady guys.
In Europe the VISA or Mastercard prepaid cards are barely if at all visible or accessible and it sounds strange to a lot of people. Whereas in US or in countries in the south-america and mexico, those seem to be very popular and often used.
If you want to watch a video on the steps and see that the card works, there is an hindi guy with guideance and PoW of this card at ATM, you can turn on the automatic transalation (don't forget to like if you enjoy and write some shout-out from me 😁) !
How does the workflow from order to activation work ?
*Explanation provided by official Goblin Cards Support.
- Purchase the card,
- Send shipping address
- Receive the card
- Message support to activate
- Receive login instructions
- Proceed to deposit via bot and spend
That are six simple steps, that are allowing you to reclaim the control over your finances and keep it private, independent of banks.
Product Details
Card type: Mastercard Prepaid Reloadable (Physical)
∙ $5,000 USD daily spending limit
∙ $25,000 USD monthly spending limit
∙$500 daily ATM withdrawal limit
∙ Balance maintained in Mexican Pesos
∙ Chip + contactless (tap to pay)
∙ Shipped via UPS (3–5 days worldwide)
∙ Dedicated app for balances and transaction history
Pricing
∙ Card: $350 USD one-time
∙ Deposit fee: 3.5% (XMR: 4%)
∙ Renewal: $100 (after 3 years)
The coins they support for deposit and pay for the card is basic, but solid: BTC, SOL, ETH, USDT, XMR
My Take: I would be keen to buy this card after like 1/2 years of usage of the virtual card provided by PrivacyGateway.io
This solution looks very promising, but we never know what the future regulation might look like and if such solution would not be basically be banned either in EU or somewhere else. But definitely good for diversifying source of payments, if one gets blocked I can use the other.
Shout out to the Goblin Cards support, who answered all my questions and resolved doubts.
TroCador
A service that offers variety of private solutions for payments like cross-chain swaps, bridges, anon donations (to implement for devs), gift-cards to be purchased. However we will focus this time only on the visa cards and how can we pay anonymously.
Trocador offers up to $1000 prepaid visa cards. There is no limit on the number of cards you can buy. You can top-up this card with any cryptocurrency available in Trocador, they support Bitcoin, XMR, ZCash, MobileCoin, Ether, Solana, their tokens and many more (checkout their site)
Issuance fee: 3%, depending on the provider.
2-Monthly payment: 2.5 $
Tx fee: Instead of the usual 2% Currency Conversion Fee, they charge $0.75 for each non-USD transaction
Prepaid Card Providers
MyPrepaidCenter (US Only) (US Dollars) - as the owners of the service say, it might be also used anywhere else but they do not guarantee it will work (likely will not).
Prepaid Cards Provided by Reward (US Only) (US Dollars) - the same as previous option.
Prepaid Cards Provided by Swype (US Dollars) - Available internationally.
Trocador issues a card from 3 different card providers:
Transactions in different currencies than that of the card may incur a currency conversion fee by the card provider (usually 2% or $0.75).
The discomfort might come for VPN users as they will be blocked from redeeming their cards and you would have lost your funds (not worth it, buddy :( )).
Stealths
Stealths as their competitors besides offering visa/mastercard prepaid cards, it also has e-sim card plans and gift cards in their offer. But as said before, here I focus on payment cards only.
There are 4 types of Cards that they offer:
- Visa Gift Card (Only US) with upload topup from 5 to 1000$ only one time
- American Express Gift Card (Only US) topup from 5 to 3000$ only one time
Here are the details of those products:
- This product is delivered automatically.
- Card activation code and instructions will be added to order page.
- American Express gift cards are issued by amexrewardcard.com
- It's possible to view transaction history and balance details on card issuer's website.
- Location to use: Only US
- Cards are issued by U.S. bank and card currency is USD (Amex).
- Support of Digital wallets (Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc.): Yes, But digital wallets checks your IP and trust scores, so we don't guarantee you can link it.
- support 3D secure: No. Some merchants may decline the transaction for this reason.
- ATMs or recurring billing: Not allowed
- Online Acceptance: limited, you are advised to test the product with low amount at first.
- Expiry time: 6 months (extension and reload not available) .
- You should not redeem more than 2 gift cards from same device in 24 hours.
Fees
- 5% of the card top-up amount or minimal 5$ ## Reloadable Cards
Stealths also offers reloadable prepaid cards. One of the product is Rewarble Voucher
Rewarble Voucher
Fees: min 5$ or 7.5% of the amount topped up.
Details for the product:
Delivery: automatic, comes together with
Support for Problem: Rewarable (MasterCard) / Visa Support
You need to activate card after purchase. Card issuer will ask for email and address. It's not allowed to use VPN on redemption, you should provide a valid email address.
Issuance of first prepaid card on Rewarble is free, additional cards and reloads cost 4.5% + $1.99. For more details on pricing, check their website.
It's possible to view card balances and transactions on the issuer's website.
Rewarble offers multiple prepaid card options, we recommend "Suna Mastercard" product. Card availability and mobile wallet acceptance might be limited in your region. It's recommended to test with small amount first.
You can use Rewarble voucher code to reload existing card.
Cards are issued by U.S. bank and card currency is USD. Card supports foreign transactions, FX fee may be charged by card issuer.
- Rewarble cards are valid for 7 days (+ another 7 days with free extension) initially, after validity period it costs $1.49/mo to keep card active.
Single-Use VCC (High Limit)
Intial topup: min 500$ - max 30k $
Fee: 8% or minimum 40$
Product Details
- Delivery of this product is manual. Please do not create order without contacting us, delivery is possible in work hours.
This is a virtual card, not a prepaid card. Virtual cards have higher approval rates.
The card is not for long term use, you need to spend the balance in the same day you receive card details (up to 3 transactions allowed).
Card currency is USD. It can be used internationally with different currencies. The bank charges 2.5% fee for non-USD transactions, please keep that in mind.
The card supports 3D secure. It works on most online merchants; including PayPal, Amazon EU, Stripe checkouts. It does not support mobile wallets.
Terms of the card are available in this link for more info.
BitRefill
It's a marketplace with a variety of gift-cards and products (e.g. E-SIM cards, Phone-refills) you could purchase with crypto. They do not support Monero or from privacy coins, they support only DASH. They support as the name might suggest, Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, LTC, DOGE, TON, SUI and USDC and USDT
How their business model works, is that they apply a fee to your final checkout, when you are about to pay.
How do they earn money ?
From the example you can see they apply some fees to the final checkout. They have lower rate of ETH/EUR pair (at the time of writing it was 2049.65) and there it's 2031.30. So allegedly they charge ETH rate + about 1% fee (222.08 Euro in total), but they can sell it on the market for 224.10 Euro (just as an example, if they would have sold it after the payment would have arrived how the money would be made). So in total they earnt about 2%
The fee might vary depending on the selected coin/token to be paid with.
My take: This product would be used by me in case I would like to gift someone a b-day a gift card, or if I would like to pay for booking or AirBnb wihout attaching my card to their service.
LinkPay
It's a virtual visa/mastercard card provider, that issues cards for specfic usage like to spend for ChatGPT subscription, Netflix.
I messaged the support with request for clarification, what card can be purchased without KYC and here is the answer I got.
Without KYC verification, you can still use basic operations with Linkpay, but there are limitations. The monthly spending limit is $500, and only advertisement cards are available for issuance. Verification is required to increase limits and enable full card functionality.
Verification in Linkpay increases your limits and enables full card functionality. While basic operations are available without it, verification is required for higher limits and extra security. Here are the verification levels:
No Verification:
Monthly spend limit: $500
Only advertisement cards are available.
Basic Verification (Email and other details + ID Upload):
Monthly spend limit: $2000
All cards are available except Apple/Google Pay.
Requirements: Full name, address, and valid ID details.
Unlimited Verification:
No limits on spend or card types.
Requirements: Valid ID photo and passing a live check.
Other Cards (to personal verification)
Above were all card solution presented, that I accessed as legal, not shady, plausible. As I said before there were a lot of cards, who seemed to by non-kyc only, but there are solutions where I had issues to access them if they are scammy or not. Thus I list it here, so you can check it on your own.
- BingCard
- KardPay
- Veil (this one really looks sketchy, similiarly to Privacy.com design, almost all scam opinions on trust pilot)
- XHype
- Solcard - Although it looks fully legit, their privacy policy and terms of usage didn't allow me to determine whether they their 3rd party does require KYC or not. About the product they offer, they offer a reloadable virtual card.
The offer of this card however is very limited, and if you have the virtual card without KYC, you are not able to attach it to your digital wallet. Here you have the details on the product they offer.
Below you got a screenshot, where they advertise themselves, having non-KYC card:
Again any action you take, you take it on your own, do not allege me afterwards if you loose money and don't come to me whining you lost money, I warned you.
Other Option to pay anonymously/pseudoanonymously
Other methods I thought about to preserve privacy are:
- Pay someone cash to pay for the money transfer from their account
Solution that perhaps is the most ridiculous, but having a bank account would be a.....
LET ME FINISH, OK ? DON'T KILL ME YET 🫣.
Having a bank account in a countries without CRS, so that your financial activity stays in that country and is not reported to countries that request the data about you. Cambodia is one of such countries, that offers friendliness towards cryptocurrencies and are allowing people to pay and purchase goods with cryptocurrencies. It of course will demand you to provide your government-ID to open an account, however due to the fact that only you and your bank know about the transaction, some minimal privacy remained, but still not fully private.
Also an interesting fact, Cambodia's National Bank launched Bakong, a blockchain-based digital payment system, which represents one of the most prominent real-world implementations of blockchain technology in a national banking system.
The system was designed to achieve three key objectives: improve financial inclusion (Cambodia had ~78% unbanked population at launch), modernize digital payments infrastructure, and reduce reliance on the US dollar in everyday transactions.
I find it's bold and I find it banger-news ⚡
Again I mention Cambodia, because I reminded myself about the talk I had pleasure to have with people from Relocatify at NBX-event, shout out to them 🫡 !
Summary
Phew..., it's been quite a long ride, didn't it ? I hope you did enjoy the article and it was insightful to you, if so please leave a comment and a like. If you have suggestions what to change, please share it in the comments.
If you're about to purchase your first wallet or a new wallet, you remember to checkout OneKey product and with my promocode: Luftie, you get 10% discount on all products available in their shop, but also 10% off on fees on perpetuals and defi fees like staking etc.
Once again, I want to express my gratefulness to OneKey team, that they noticed me and believed in me. That means a lot to me, because such things do not happen to all of small creators and I got noticed and I'm happy about it, which only propels me to create better content for you.
Donations
As I promised above, here you have the addresses to my wallets for certain chains, if you want to send some coins/tokens to support me, feel free to do so. I'll be more than glad and you can send me the message on Signal (you can also use Telegram, but please avoid it, I prepare to remove my account from there. I'm fed up with it's flashiness, people that are running scams there and hoes with their channels)
Crypto Addresses:
Monero (XMR): 44mBpaeJSuxTSFTXRxAb289mNiPgHTk6tMaKXPjg2DNQMbmxP1dFA86Q9QnHoU8T62XhQputbGkESiQBD31QrtfN377wGD3
Bitcoin: bc1q5dxqaf2xva57rlac8gj5g3apmm0edvanvscyhw
Ether (ETH): 0x524C676f9e31b6a4CaE067c41d01E9878b7FF14B
Solana (SOL): DgsvUBEvQdQVk7bxQSA2cEjFuJRwMFokeGbMXtq6MY4X
Mobile Coin (MOB): 7xB623noRRqqMxbTwqvbJWfcpycYyWEvWQAALigKn4VrwhuHZxsFP4Xkexp5MyK53pE8mfomXzDPaLXuwuQPw8RNveTQDSEuDQcPopv6Foyfei6DCkzJJx1j68j4xuXRQ94Q4SoC22vRMWKA58eNmvG2Nx2sy6wY1pu7ZzZTozYqL1vEDzGK1ajGNB9VLxppXarkpw3kBjUVbtjYzWo2iENpBpfVQ4tXaetUiGrv7EvPDa
Once again. If you donated on one of those addresses, thank you very much for your support 💜
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