So I was toying around with the idea of what it would take to go full Snowdon mode. I starting looking around for info online about how to de-bank yourself and unfortunately non of what I found was useful. One comment on a related reddit post literally said you should just get over your irrational fear of banks, which I get what he means from a great depression standpoint but that’s still incredibly unhelpful. Other resources pretty much all said it’s too inconvenient, too expensive (because a lot of services you would use might charge fees), and not worth the effort. Most of the discussion around this topic though was focused on normie reasons like not trusting them with your money or whatever, but not much discussion was related to how banks participate in the ever expanding data market. I figured it would be more helpful to ask this wonderful community of like minded privacy enjoyers.
A bit of context on the scope of the question:
- I love monero and would use it for most of my online purchases where applicable, but I don’t want to store my money in crypto unless I can be 100% sure it’s a reliable stable coin, and I don’t trust the current state of crypto to be capable of that so a different way of storing money would make more sense (the obvious answer being cash in a safe like the good ol’ days).
- I’m sure this community would take this as a given, but I’m not looking to move from a bank to another service that requires a similar level of PII, like cash app. Only based anonymous methods allowed
- However I don’t necessarily mean untraceable. I’m not looking to start beef with the IRS, I just don’t want my financial info in the data market
Move to the country and take work where you get paid in cash.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what ICE is currently targeting, so you’d better look white.
Also, never conduct a financial transaction over $10k. There are reporting requirements above that number even if you’re paying cash. And cash above $10k is considered enough evidence to do deeper investigations into your activity, which can get annoying after a while, even if you’re not doing anything wrong.
What’s annoying to me is that this $10k threshold has existed for over 20 years, and never goes up.