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Starting a series of toots on my experience jumping in to world.
Attempting to follow strategies for high anonymity, 'cause my desire is to use it like cash.
Using
Attempting only procurement using atm

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First experience with attempt at purchasing with cash.
Used atm that only requires sms verification. Accessed online sms service on my phone via vpn → tor instead of personal phone. First sms number I tried failed, atm said number was not allowed. Second number I tried worked.
High transaction fee of 14.2% out the door. That includes the miner fee for posting to block chain. I got a very low rate of 2 sat/b. Took about 2 hours to post.

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Using , so next step is to mix coin using before spending it. I'm not playing with much so I used the smallest available pool of 0.001btc.
I have two transactions. Both took about an hour to complete mixing. However, one transaction took about an hour to post to the blockchain, and the second took over 6 hours.
Mixing includes pool and miner fees. I got a very low rate of 1sat/b at low priority. Total fee was 2.1% (using smallest amount so high %).

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Next made a purchase using mixed coin from . Chose miner fee of 2.1sat/b for a faster post time. Small transaction, no richochet, so miner fee ended up being 1.7%. Note that selecting richochet added a massive 0.001btc to the transaction fee. I'm a bit confused by what the fee profile of this tool is.
Still waiting for spend to post. Overal total fees result for small purchase (about $15)
- cash to purchase: 18.89%
- starting btc balance to purchase: 4.69%

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Comparing to credit cards which are usually about 2%, I'm getting a much higher fee using with . I'll keep playing and post, and see if this trend continues.

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Service called MoonPay appears to be a legit zero fee service for offramping back to USD via a temporary virtual credit card enabling near anonymous credit card purchases.

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Mixing fee calculator whirlpoolfees.com helps figure out how to significantly reduce total overall fees for procurement. Helps identify the settings needed to get less than 1%.

Quiet public

@jqiriazi oh dear! using bitcoin is not positive climate action!!

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@autumnontape for sure, totally agree. I don't intend to use it regularly. But, it's established a place in our world and doesn't seem to be going away, so want to get to know it a bit better

Quiet public

@jqiriazi i don't think that will ever be necessary, bitcoin has an established place because it's an under-regulated security for rich speculators, not because it will ever be useful as a currency

and the adoption of blockchain stuff at large is still small enough in scale to resist its progress