[handrous]

> Not only that, I have had payments mysteriously fail with big online merchants, and after following it up through multiple layers of support I was told that particular email services are automatically flagged. You can guess which ones.

You don't need nefarious motives to explain that particular behavior. Operate a store or payment system without rejecting easy-to-sign-up-for-anonymously email addresses, especially ones with a free tier, and you'll find out very quickly why they downrank the trustworthiness of, or simply block, such services. Automated credit card fraud is huge and no fun at all to deal with.

[swiley]

And that is why some people really like crypto currency. You get what is essentially ssh for money with all the pro and con implications.

[imglorp]

Note BTC and others are pseudo-anonymous, because the whole world knows the source and destination wallet of every transaction. If someone is ever serious about finding you, they can follow the chain to wherever you cashed out and a subpoena will do the rest.

There are fully anonymous coins like Monero, ZCash, etc.

[swiley]

Right, but you also don't have to deal with fraudulent claw backs like with credit cards. It's not secret but it makes the integration/code easier. This is why a lot of obscure/experimental services tend to have bitcoin payment support early on and struggle with paypal/credit cards.

[handrous]

Right: a vendor's not forced to care whether any bitcoin they accept was stolen, but they are forced to care whether a credit card they accept was stolen. Doing a sufficiently shitty job of keeping out purchases with stolen cards can literally end a business, in a hurry. Meanwhile nothing's going to happen about stolen bitcoin you accept—probably you'll never even know—unless there's an actual police investigation you get wrapped up in. In that respect, it's more cash-like.