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Comment by radicality | Hacker News Reader

Hi. Thanks for the great service!

Any chance you would consider adding cryptocurrency payments as an option? You would load up the account with these prepaid credits, and then use whatever plan you want until the credits run out. This is how I pay for Mullvad and works well for me.

I think would be nice as I see kagi is aiming to be privacy-forward. And it’s nice knowing that such a payment is a one-off and won’t forever keep renewing.

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We have a discussion on our forum [1] about this. Input welcome!

[1] https://kagifeedback.org/d/493-enable-anonymous-payments-ala...

Yikes, that thread reflects so badly on Kagi to me. Over a year of people explaining why Monero is needed if you actually cared about user privacy, with no results. Weird claims that it is difficult to implement. Can only conclude that the company doesn't actually care about user privacy

Or, more likely, they didn't want to take on the additional burden of transacting in funny money of dubious worth.

Hope you enjoy linking all your search queries to your credit card, really. This attitude is unbelievable to me.

And pray tell, how does one acquire this Monero that you're defending with religious fervor? By linking your credit card to some "currency" exchange that may or may not already be under investigation for fraud?

Even if it were a process as invasive and painful as getting a bank account, it would remain the only technology that enables users to get a search account privately (since Kagi says cash is not scalable for them). Given the level of snark and off-topicness, I presume you don't actually expect me to answer the question with dozens of different methods.

This is a company that claims over and over that they are privacy-respecting, but are running a service that unnecessarily collects your real ID via credit card, otherwise you can't do searches. After seeing what happened to Google, I am shocked that people like you are so dismissive toward me for trying to hold them to account and caring about this issue. Yes I react with religious fervor at this issue - privacy. This is an age where companies are handing over information to convict people for seeking abortions even in the US.

If you have another solution then please share it.

> Given the level of snark and off-topicness, I presume you don't actually expect me to answer the question with dozens of different methods.

Dozens of different methods to ... buy crypto? You can keep them.

I would trust something like Kagi more than any crypto exchange to keep my privacy.

You are right that it may not be a good idea to have all your searches tied to your identity, but mixing crypto into that won't help.

I dont understand anything you wrote here

you have to trust not just kagi: the server hosts kagi uses, kagi security policies, all kagi employees, the country kagi operates in, and kagi as a business in perpetuity (not getting bought or drastically changing just to survive).

I can't trust that forever. So it's really just simple that they should have a way to dissociate accounts with searches and payments properly

If you use your credit card with an exchange to buy Monero, then use that Monero (from a non-custodial/self operated wallet) to pay for Kagi search (or Mullvad or anything else) you’re not linking the ID tied to the credit card to your searches and other activity. That’s the point.

That just means there is one more step in the chain to try and identify me, not that it’s impossible.

It's a step that is, if not impossible, at least statistically infeasible…

Please don’t waste time on this! You’re all doing such good work and I’d much rather not see it wasted on indulging some techno-anarchist nerds

There is a lot of value currently tied up in crypto around the world, with increasing difficulty in using it on products and services. Offering a way to use this value would open additional revenue streams for Kagi. The challenge is in conversion, as many banks do not support the practise, and laws are becoming tougher with regards to crypto payments.

So it would be useless to Kagi…

That doesn't sound particularly valuable to me. If it's that valuable, why don't you convert it to USD and pay Kagi with that?

Anonymity?

This sounds an awful lot like you're saying "it's too hard for me and others to convert our crypto into cash, so I'd like Kagi to do it for me."

Those all sound like solid arguments not to do it?

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