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Kagi currently requires an account/email to sign up.

Search is a very intimate service, and I am very hesitant to use a service where it has full knowledge of my searches because it's linked to an account/email.

An anonymous email can be used, but paying for the subscription with a credit card requires giving personal information. A solution is to enable payments through cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Monero.

Mullvad, the VPN service, is a potential model to follow. In order to use their service, you send a payment which instantly generates a code, and then you input the code on their app. There is no account or email needed and payment can be done through a variety of ways including credit card, Bitcoin, cash in an envelope, etc.

The privacy policy states that no personal information is collected, and while that is great to see, a much stronger guarantee is to enable anonymous payments.

    • Vlad

    • Best Answerset by Vlad

    Tovo

    Just to acknowledge that Kagi already implements with OpenNode to accept crypto payments so this is specifically about Monero.

    I understand the technical issues with implementing Monero, but given the number of users that will be attracted to Kagi specifically because if its privacy, it seems quite inconsistent to only offer non-anonymised payment formats.

    We heard the same argument before implementing crypto, and the reality is it attracted very small number of users (less than 0.3% Kagi users pay with crypto). Since this was extremely hard to implement, and there are already ways to convert Monero to Bitcoin so there is path to payment, and based on our previous experience we expect the impact of implementing Monero directly to be minimal, we have decided to focus our very limited resources elsewhere (eg. make search better). Thanks for understanding.

    Eh I'm not big on the whole crypto as annonymous payment thing for a few reasons:
    1) It is by definition not annonymous, every transaction is publically viewable on the blockchain so you can see where the money come from and central exchanges know your address. So why jump through all the hoops in the first place?
    2) Most of the mainstream coins have a terrible energy footprint, so supporting that is eh...

    Just my 2 cents on that though.

      5 days later

      I think that before even starting to discuss crypto, we should look at the gift code possibility. It makes easier to convince someone in the family to start using (just send a $5 gift code), it helps spreading the brand because of third-party vendors and some friend could pay for you if the issue is trusting Kagi with your credit card.

      That said, a lot of other privacy services (Mullvad, Tutanota, Cryptomator, etc.) use this marketplace, which accepts crypto and could remove the burden from Kagi to deal with the whole series of problems related to crypto (like implementing the payment gate, dealing with price volatility, etc.):
      https://digitalgoods.proxysto.re/

        Vlad

        I didn't find any information about how you can list a product, but because they have an "In Stock" field, I would guess they will buy in batches (probably using an ordinary payment method?) and reselling it.

        About their reliability, I agree with you and I don't know enough about to confirm anything, but I mentioned it because they are an official seller for most of the services they sell the gift card. Maybe someone could just email them after the release about the existence of Kagi and hope they find it interest enough to buy the gift cards and sell it independently with a margin over the official price?

            a month later

            Kai Bitcoin is indeed a public blockchain and horrible for privacy, though there are ways to obtain potential anonymity. Monero however is the real deal and is known as a "Privacy Coin". The blockchain is not public and no one has yet to find a way to expose users transactions. It does use Proof Of Work algorithm like Bitcoin that is energy hungry but Monero's is optimized to make it very hard for large energy hungry data centers to join in on the crypto mining. The energy portion of Monero needs to be improved, however the privacy portion is solid and backed by the privacy community and many private services like Mullvad.

              I love Kagi and am happy to pay for search engines that don't screw users over. However, because one must log in to use Kagi, all our search history is connected to a single account. Unlike Google, we can't just change IP's, clear cookies, open Google in Private browser window, etc to make it harder for Google and friends to track us.

              I trust Kagi far more then Google to do the right thing but many of us who seek a private search engine would like to maintain our anonymity as much as we can when we can. There is very few greater ways to link someones online idneity to their real identity then with their financial info. Every Kagi user that pays is effectively linked to their real identity even if Kagi promises in the future to never change their stance on data collection. By the nature of search it's also very hard to verify if it ever does happen. To make matters worse, as Kagi grows in popularity, governments will know that all payed users of Kagi are connected to their real identities, what more could a government ask for.

              I personally will be holding off on paying for any search engine, not just Kagi, unless/until a private option exists as well. A good chunk of others probably feel the same way if not at least uncomfortable with the thought. There is a benefit for Kagi as well because by accepting Bitcoin or Monero, those who own the coins will have a new service they can spend their money on which will attract even more users to Kagi. Accepting Monero is a great way to get privacy minded people that own Monero to spread the word about Kagi.

              Minimize data collection/potential leakage points is the first step to privacy/anonymity.

                Merged 2 posts from Private Search : Private Payment. Accept Bitcoin and/or Monero..
                  9 days later

                  I would be happy to financially support Kagi. However, as NoGoogle laid out, hesitation lies with linking our financial information to our search provider. Currently, there is no reason to distrust your promises of privacy, but companies change and governments can compel companies to log data.
                  For something as personal as search data, I'd only feel comfortable using Monero as payment (preferably with first party support vs offloading payment validation to third parties). As stated before, Mullvad provides the best example for accepting crypto.
                  Here is a relevant article directly from Monero that may be useful if you wish to pursue this.

                  Kagi fulfills a niche and is intentionally strict and outspoken on its stance on privacy. That stance in particular draws in a certain crowd of people: those who appreciate privacy preserving services. Your current method of payment (Stripe) does not respect what you have built up.

                    11 days later

                    Re crypto privacy/energy concerns:

                    If you are technically proficient, overcoming the privacy bit is just matter of knowledge and understanding best practices. Similarly, diving into the technical nuances sheds a lot of light onto just how speculative and tenuous much of the energy-related claims floated really are.

                    It's virtually impossible to quantify the energy footprint of a crypto payment (despite widely-circulated attempts) and even more difficult to quantify the footprint of processing one credit card payment. On privacy, at worst, paying with crypto is only slightly more private than using a credit card, and at best virtually anonymous.

                    I don't see why either should be a concern in this case.

                      Vlad Indeed Gift cards are an easy way to offer crypto payments to your users.

                      Here are a some providers that I have tried myself

                      1. Bitrefiil.com

                      EDIT: To learn more, here is a great AMA with the founder https://stacker.news/items/38232
                      Large, established player. Offers Gift cards/Vouchers from 186 countries
                      No registration required (email-only), but optional
                      Supported crypto:

                      1. Coincards.com
                        Has only US/Canada vouchers in their portfolio, but can be used globally. Should work for Kagi (CA, right?)
                        No registration required (email-only) , but optional

                      2. Proxysto.re
                        Small, but legit shop in Germany. Prices denominated in EUR; not sure they could display prices USD as well. Plus, it might have tax/fx implications if you sell to them in EUR

                      Supported crypto: Bitcoin (on-chain only) and Monero
                      Cons: Does not offer Bitcoin (Lighting)

                        19 days later

                        Most in the privacy field won't feel comfortable for a single organization to link search results, an account identifier (email right now) and a payment information.
                        While we want to trust Kagi, it could be a government honey pot, bought in the future by greedy corporation, etc.

                        So right now we have those 3 pieces of information, when not linked, they don't reveal much.

                        From these 3 pieces of information, currently none are anonymous:

                        And a part of those can be made anonymous:

                        • the account identifier can be made anonymous (using a Mullvad style of random account number instead of email).
                        • the payment can be made anonymous by allowing payment by cash, voucher you can buy outside the account (physical voucher and any third party reseller), crypto - to the extent you can trust crypto to be bug-less and their privacy preserving promises).

                        And now we're left to trust Kagi only for the search results, which is probably as good as we can get. 🙂

                        Vlad Can we get a timeline for when a non credit card payment option will go live?

                        Many here which are privacy minded are just eagerly waiting on the sidelines ready to pay.

                            NoGoogle Incorporating any form of payment is a complicated effort taking few weeks of entire teams time. Adding complexity of unfamiliar provider apis, having to change billing structure completely (no recurring payments) and unknown complexity of acounting/tax reporting makes this a very high stakes feature. So we are not eager to jump into it right away until we ship features we currently have in queue.

                                a month later

                                Mullvad recently rolled out a gift card system allowing people to gift (or buy for themselves) a subscription without ever linking their payment data with their account.

                                https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/7/26/mullvad-is-now-available-on-amazon-us-se/

                                Mullvad also accept Monero as payment which, out of all the crypto currencies, is the only one I actually purchase since its actually usable for Private purchases like Donations, VPNs and VPSs

                                  pfych It also took Mullvad 13 years to do so (launched in 2009) and millions of dollars in revenue and resources. Note that Kagi launched less than 3 months ago and has a much smaller team, tackling a much bigger problem (Web search vs VPN).

                                  We want to be held up to high standards but we should also be realistic about expectations we put in front of the Kagi team.

                                      a month later

                                      Kai Monero is an actually private crypto coin. Don't know about the energy usage, though I totally agree with your point.

                                          Since about 2020, it has become a large burden for a person or business in the USA to comply with all tax codes concerning cryptocurrency. Large enough, that it hardly seems worth the time and cost given the many problems that all cryptocurrencies share when used as a proxy for fiat money. Also, most businesses and non-profits who have heeded the loud calls to accept cryptocurrency have discovered, instead, shockingly unrequited demand—few users will ever pay in cryptocurrency; and of those, most don’t stick with paying with cryptocurrency for more than 1-3 months. From a rational business angle, “crypto” just sucks.