Alice and her quest for a VPN

Alice lives on a small island in the pacific ocean called "Tuvalu" . Although her island is quite beautiful (see exhibit #1) and has a rich culture, there are only around 10,632 other Tuvaluans living alongside her.

Her little brother "Loto" learned about atomic particles in school a few days ago. He hasn't shut up about it. He is asking a lot of questions that Alice cannot really answer. She'd really like to show him an episode of the Big Bang Theory and let Sheldon do the explaining.

However, she is getting geo-blocked by all major streaming sites. She'd like to spend $3 of her hard earned money, to buy the first few episodes for her brother but Stripe doesn't even acknowledge her country's existence.

Alice therefore needs to buy a subscription for Mullvad VPN and she'd also like to remain anonymous in the process. Her grandma is a bit old-school and doesn't like her to watch non-christian TV. After some research, she concludes that Monero is clearly the best payment form.

How can she get a hold of some XMR? She manages to create an account on KuCoin. Upon registering she is immediately greeted with a gambling pop-up ("Spin the wheel to win up to 1.34 TRON!"). Alice is a bit confused but proceeds anyway.

She deposits some of her Tuvaluan dollars onto the exchange. Finally! She's so close. To her surprise, a yellow scary looking popup appears. Her account is blocked for "suspicious behaviour"! The support agent tells her that the algorithm is a black-box. They cannot tell her why she was flagged. But they suspect it may be because no Tuvaluan ever tried to register before? Why would someone on an island buy crypto? "It just seems suspicious..."

Alice is determined to get through this. Although the support agent is struggling to respond to her (there is clearly a language barrier) and the back and forth is painfully slow (the KuCoin employee sometimes takes days to respond to her messages), the answer seems quite easy: Alice just needs to verify her identity with a quick KYC check™.

She gets on a video call. However, QuickKYC (the company that KuCoin has outsourced the identity check to) has concluded that it is not economically viable to think about Tuvaluans. "Ma'am, my hands are tied. I have no idea how to assess the credibility of the document. Please try again in a few months". She had read about the hack that QuickKYC was hit by two weeks ago (58,345 identities were stolen) so she wasn't happy to send her ID to them but she was willing to do anything for her brother! Alice is getting quite annoyed by now. Why is this so difficult?

Sasha wants to donate

Sasha, 28, was born and raised in Minsk (Belarus). Over his lifetime he has witnessed increased political oppression in his country. He was never directly involved in politics and also does not protest. He doesn't feel qualified to contribute anything directly. He does have deep feeling of "something is going wrong" though.

During the 2020 presidential election campaign, he witnessed friends of friends being put on trial for their activism. A friend of his mother was hurt during a protest and had to stay in the hospital for multiple months. Their family struggled to pay the medical bills. Although he is unsure what exactly to make of the situation, he believes it is generally wrong to have lives ruined over expressing an opinion.

Sasha wants to donate to one of the few remaining opposition solidarity initiatives. They pay medical and legal fees of those who were prosecuted. But he worries that he'll face repercussions. He knows that more than 100 Belarusians were prosecuted for donations in 2020.

Some of the organization accept crypto donations and Sasha also has some Bitcoin he'd be willing to use. However, he is aware that their neighbouring country Russia, is developing systems to track blockchain transactions. The coins are linked directly to his identity as he bought them on a centralized exchange a few months ago.

He knows that Monero is the most private cryptocurrency. It'd allow him to donate while still sleeping well at night. One of the organizations accepts it for donations. He wonders: Where can I exchange Bitcoin into Monero without linking it to my identity and without having my funds frozen?