While I'm generally happy with cryptocurrency for reasons of practicality, privacy, and broader governance, connecting both your private communications and you

While I'm generally happy with cryptocurrency for reasons of practicality, privacy, and broader governance, connecting both your private communications and your private purchases to your phone number (and to each other) is exceedingly unwise. Especially as most western countries insist on connecting your phone number with government-issued ID. Anybody with technical knowledge and a modicum of appreciation for privacy should be either bitterly amused or straight up appalled. The correct solution: decouple messaging from your offline identity (phone number etc.). Decouple transactions from offline identity and from communications - proper use of cryptocurrency is good for that. "Every program attempts to expand until it can connect online identity with offline identity. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." [1] -- [1] with apologies to jwz - his original is: “Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”