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…
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.
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.
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).
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.
Why don’t you like crypto???
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’d argue that crypto is more efficient than the legacy fiat currency banking systems.
I don’t believe this to be true.
Scammers are attracted to money. There are plenty of fiat scammers too.
Sure, but you don’t see fiat currencies being used to pump and dump.
Crypto doesn’t propose any kind of regulation or deregulation.
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.
The fundamental driving force behind it is very much the same as the fediverse. It’s decentralized money.
No. Distributed systems are fundamentally incompatible with federated systems. They are both decentralized but the way they are decentralized is very different.
They serve the purpose of being able to quickly and easily send money around the globe without middle men that can censor your transactions.
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.
There are many places in the world where it’s difficult to even get a bank account.
I’d love to see information about that.
I don’t understand where you got the ideas that you have about cryptocurrency?
I’ve seen cryptocurrency spaces and have informed myself on the subject. I don’t believe it solves real problems.
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.
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.
