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Anyone pay for VPS / hosting with crypto? Is it actually safe, and what do you recommend?
mohamedshehata
Member
in General
Thinking about paying for a couple of VPS with cryptocurrency instead of a card, mostly for privacy. Before I do, wanted to hear from people who actually do this.
Comments
We have a number of customers who pay for VPS and higher end dedicated servers every month using crypto without any problems
I mean it is risky in a sense. If you use crypto, you must understand the implications.
I do crypto payments for virtually all my chicken purchases.
Just make sure you're dealing with reputable hosts, it's impossible to chargeback in case of a fraud.
Also most providers don't refund crypto purchases, best case you'll get your money back as credits.
I use crypto exclusively. The important thing to remember is cryptocurrency is not private by default. Except for Monero (XMR) and a few others, every transaction is publicly recorded on the blockchain. It may be good to help prevent casual identity theft, but something like Bitcoin won't provide true privacy. For that, use Monero.
I've spent many thousands of dollars on VPSes using cryptocurrency. The only thing to keep in mind is that the coin ownership is determined by math, not contract law. If you send cryptocurrency to a scammer, you can't do a chargeback. They have what you gave them and you can't reverse the transaction. And even if the provider is legitimate and not a scammer, if something goes wrong, they often won't refund you if you paid with cryptocurrency due to strict money laundering legislation, so even if you aren't paying a scammer, treat the transaction as permanent.
Another thing to note, which is more general cryptocurrency good hygiene, is to use a self-custodial wallet, i.e. don't store your money on an online "wallet", otherwise they can just close your account and you lose everything. So use a genuine local wallet (e.g. Feather for XMR), not a web wallet. As long as you keep that in mind, it's as safe as any other payment.
As a bonus, if you use Monero for privacy, every coin is the same and there is no chance that some payment gateway will flag your transaction as having "dirty coins" and demand extra KYC or just steal your funds. With Monero, that's impossible, so any provider that accepts it will have far fewer issues with the money getting frozen by a third party.
Overall, I agree. Monero is the goat.
Sad thing is, that for EU business offramping Monero is hard, if not impossible. You can of course swap using unregulated shady instant swap services, but that adds more problems.
However, this does not stop us or me personally, Monero is great, because of really strong community, price raises, while they are delisted from almost anywhere. It's sweet.