Enable anonymous payments ala Bitcoin/Monero

Anonymous22

Do you think that it would be perceived as a sound and well reasoned argument if you resort to phrases like "criminal banks" and "regulatory BS"?

Gredharm

Anonymous22 Banks and governments try to malign crypto and anything privacy related as criminal, while banks and governments destroy entire countries and the latter, responsible for regulatory BS, outright commit mass murder for profit.

I think it's fair to call them what they are, when they don't hesitate to use their tools of oppression against their citizens.

They are the enemy and should be clearly labelled as such.

RoxyRoxyRoxy

Gredharm Hi @Gredharm, I can appreciate you're passionate about this but please don't veer into off-topic debates 🙂
To all in thread- I'll see if there's any updates to share on this from the team.

Vlad

Gredharm

It is marked as done because we have implemented Bitcoin support, based on very vocal demand from crypto community, years ago. It took major effort from our team and the result has not been encouraging. Less than 0.1% of our users/transactions use Bitcoin. Presumeably Monero is used by even less people and it is super hard to justify continued investoment into something that just a few users would evnetually use. Unless we can get some sort of commitment from Monero community that thousands would flock to Kagi if this was done it is hard to justify spending resources on billing when our existing customers expect better search every week.

Gredharm

Vlad

I didn't actually know Bitcoin was already accepted, so that is a good step. But the crypto market is simply a different market than the fiat market and needs to be actively promoted to in order to get meaningful sales.

For example I pay using my actual credit card for my subscription with Kagi and I use it for most things, particularly my work. But I pay with Nano on NanoGPT and I use that when I want to be extra sure of privacy. I also know NanoGPT get paid significantly more by card than by crypto as well, but crypto for them does at least make a good chunk. But that's because they promote to those communities directly. I only found out about them from Reddit.

I'd be willing to bet if a Kagi rep just went into a few crypto subs on Reddit and posted "Hey, FYI Kagi now let you pay in Bitcoin and sign up by VPN, with anonymous email addresses supported so we don't have any of your data," you'd get immediate subscriptions. Less than an hour's work would probably result in genuinely meaningful return by directly targeting places crypto users actually frequent.

Anonymous12

Gredharm I'd be willing to bet if a Kagi rep just went into a few crypto subs on Reddit and posted "Hey, FYI Kagi now let you pay in Bitcoin and sign up by VPN, with anonymous email addresses supported so we don't have any of your data," you'd get immediate subscriptions. Less than an hour's work would probably result in genuinely meaningful return by directly targeting places crypto users actually frequent.

This is always the promise of crypto "enthusiasts" and I sincerely doubt in this one particular case it will finally actually totally be true.

Even if they suddenly doubled their crypto patronage, less than 0.2% isn't exactly something to get excited about 🫠

Gredharm

Anonymous12
Maybe you're right. But I know it HAS worked for another AI service that is somewhat of a Kagi competitor, so there must be a way to do it right.

And it's not about raw numbers, its about cost/benefit ratio. If it takes an hour to make a few posts and that gets them dozens of subscribers (then continue to gradually grow), even if it's a small number, the cost/benefit is worth it.

Vlad

Making few posts is not a problem, we did spend significant time looking into Monero and could not find a payment processor that checked all our boxes.

a5sj0fh

Getting commitment from thousands of Monero users isn't something I or anyone could likely guarantee, but I've been waiting on Monero integration before selling Kagi to my privacy community. I personally think it would be the last differentiator needed along with tor and privacy pass support to really prove the kagi is the de facto leader in private search. I've personally heard from several people I've talked to that only accepting Bitcoin (the opposite of a private payment) makes Kagi look out of touch with the privacy movement.

@Vlad what kinds of requirements was your team looking for in a Monero payment processor that couldn't be met?

Pleonasm

It may be beneficial for Kagi to periodically conduct an independent audit of the company's claims about how the privacy of customers' search history is protected. It does not appear that the security audit conducted by Kagi in 2022 encompassed those considerations.

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