I’ve never used a crowdfunding site to receive donations, and I’m curious about the privacy and security implications.
What is the process for configuring Liberapay with Stripe (USA)?
What data is required by Stripe (USA)?
What data is required by bank (USA)?
Is Liberapay username and/or email address shared with Stripe and/or bank at any point?
For me, this is more about personal safety than a general desire for privacy. If anyone can answer these questions, please share. Thanks.
Plenty.
My questions are specifically about Liberapay and how Stripe and banks are integrated into it. I’m really looking for people with direct experience or knowledge about Liberapay.
For instance, is a Stripe account required, or is it only used as a middle man, similar to how it is used for making donations or purchases? And importantly, are there any entities that will see both my username (user0) and my irl identity? I feel like I might trust Liberapay, but I don’t trust for-profit companies like Stripe and my bank.
I’m very cautious about this because I need to be. Liberapay seems to be the best option for securely receiving donations, but I just want to know if there are still dangers that can’t be avoided. And it’s frustrating that I’ve not been able to find any information online about the process of setting up an account to receive donations.
I do not have any clear answers to your questions, but I definitely do know you will be entrusting various third-parties with your information. If you prefer not to disclose such information, then I can provide alternative suggestions with more privacy and security at the expense of convenience.
Liberapay are working squarely within the government-regulated, KYC/AML, fiat currency space. I don’t want to criticise them for that - it’s a perfectly reasonable business decision and makes things easier for the majority of their users - both donors and recipients.
However, it does mean that if you want to receive money through them (either with Stripe or Paypal or any other future payment provider that Liberapay offer) then you will have to provide that payment provider enough information for them to figure out whether you are on a list of untouchables / politically disapproved persons / whatever you want to call it.
At least with Liberapay (unlike with e.g. GoFundMe) they do not hold your donated funds in a balance but rather pay them out immediately, so if you subsequently get added to the “naughty list”, your existing funds are safe (or at least safe from the government pressuring Liberapay, not safe from wherever they got paid out into).
I understand this, but it is unclear what specific information is required and what data would be made available in the process. For instance, would Stripe require pictures of my face? That’s a deal-breaker for me right there, but there are other compromises that I’m willing to make.
I would really like to know if Stripe or my bank would be able to link my irl legal identity with my user0 internet identity. Optimally, Liberapay would use a special identifier and only share with the financial institutions that irl me is a user of their platform, without sharing which specific user I am. So people donating to me wouldn’t know my irl identity, while the financial institutions woulnd’t know my user0 internet identity.
Yes, please share. Maybe I should change the name of this topic to be less specific.
Alright, generate a Monero wallet and its address. You can choose to use it as-is for your primary address, and/or create other addresses for security by compartmentalization/isolation purposes.
Share the address(es) using an openalias (local-part@domain.tld or sub.domain.tld), QR code, and/or alphanumeric string via secure communication method(s) of your choice.
That is enough, but if you want to integrate a plugin using a (self-hosted) e-commerce CMS instead, you can use this resource:
Otherwise, there are other payment gateway solutions that may be worth considering:
From my limited research, BTCPay Server and Bitcart seem to use the same software and offer self-hosted solutions.
As far as I can see, that is entirely within your control i.e. how you promote it. In other words, you would be the one to create the link between user0 and the receipt of payments. (However, yes, in most countries for most payment mechanisms, receipt of payments is unavoidably linked to your real legal identity.)
If for some reason though you attract the attention of your government (e.g. you are “Ross Ulbricht”) then the previous paragraph doesn’t apply. 
I had a feeling that would be the recommendation, and I will definitely look into going this route. Converting crypto into fiat currency has its own challenges though.
I think I would first need to create a Bitcoin wallet and convert Monero to Bitcoin. Then I would either need to find a Bitcoin ATM or sell on an exchange, requiring a Bitcoin wallet linked to my bank. I don’t want to sell Monero/Bitcoin by meeting someone in-person.
And I do want to also have an option for people that don’t use crypto.
I think I’m still not explaining myself well enough. My user0 identity is the one used for my code contributions on Codeberg and would need to be the same identity used for Liberapay. Using this identity, I came out as trans, and I currently want to hide this aspect of myself from my bank.
So the question is whether or not Liberapay shares my username on their platform (user0) with the financial entities (Stripe and bank).
I have already created a Liberapay account; I just haven’t finished setting it up yet. When I first created the account, there was a notification that said “The ID number of your Liberapay account is *******” (I’m obviously hiding the actual number).
So I’m wondering if Liberapay uses that ID number to identify my account to financial entities instead of using my username, in order to protect my privacy. Stripe and my bank would then only see that my legal identity is linked to Liberapay ID number ******* instead of user0.
I may need to reach out to Liberapay on the fediverse. I was just curious if anyone on this forum was familiar enough with Liberapay to know the answers to these questions.
I agree, I suggest using Bisq for your needs:
Then decide on which fiat payment methods work best for you.
You can also consider Hodl Hodl:
After signing up, you can see the list of payment methods available, and even add them subject to approval.
You can use Cake Wallet to convert fiat (credit and debit cards) into cryptocurrencies such as Monero, then immediately send it to an address.
I found a step-by-step youtube video for creating a Stripe account and learned that there is a requirement to pay for phone service. So I will not be able to use Liberapay anyway.
Maybe Open Collective could fit your needs more, though I am thinking it won’t here. It does allow for bank transfers (See the page on bank transfers: https://docs.opencollective.com/help/fiscal-hosts/receiving-money/bank-transfers).
Yeah, I can’t even access the main site without javascript. And direct bank transfers would probably out me to my bank anyway. Thanks for the suggestion though.
If you are still interested in crowdfunding/fundraising platforms in spite of the various financial requirements, see this comprehensive list from Snowdrift:
Thank you for the link and your continued help. After looking through lots of options, I don’t think anything that currently exists will work for my needs, other than Monero. And besides setting up Monero, I will apparently need to allocate a lot of free space for the Monero blockchain.
I didn’t mention this before, but the reason I’m interested in donations is to help pay for surgery and other medical bills. Since I have projects on Codeberg, I had thought that I could use Liberapay or a similar service to ask for donations and explain my reason for asking. But these platforms really aren’t for that purpose, and I realize that I shouldn’t try to use them that way. And also, none of them are safe for me to use. I certainly don’t want to be doxxed and terrorized.
So yeah, I will eventually try to setup Monero and plan out how to safely convert it to usable currency.
You do not have to download the whole blockchain in order to use monero. It is the recommended way, but not necessary. Many wallet apps already have the option to use nodes other people are hosting, and it is mostly safe to use. Just be sure to change the node if your wallet ever gives you a warning. You could invest the time and storage in running a node if the value or spending ever gets to a point where you become very concerned
Check out this episode of breaking monero for more details on the subject Breaking Monero Episode 07: Remote Nodes - Invidious
When I last downloaded the entire Monero blockchain last month, it was 190.5 GB. You can prune it to reduce the size requirement.
After reading a bit more and watching some videos, I think I’d rather use remote nodes. I would also like to implement a split wallet, so that I have an offline wallet vm and an online wallet vm, but I’m still looking into how to do that with a GUI wallet.
You will probably be using this resource then:
If you prefer using hardware wallets instead, here are the ones that support Monero:
I have not acquired a hardware wallet for Monero just yet, but if I did, I would trust the Trezor Model T due to its open-source firmware, among other security features.
A cold wallet is what I’m after. I need to read a bit more to find the right wallet to use for a split offline/online setup.