Are any banks better than others?

[FranklyFlawless (Frank Lý)]

@thelittleguy

I wish I could do this but I need a bank to receive my paychecks and to invest from.

Okay, well depending on your employer, you may be able to receive your paychecks in physical cheques to bring to a cash-chequeing service, although they typically charge an item fee for such a transaction. I do not (need to) know your investment portfolio and/or workflow in detail, but if you are specifically investing in cryptocurrencies, there are P2P exchanges to faciliate that, such as Bisq, Retoswap and RoboSats.

@Dellsam1

How do you deal with services that require card details?

Prepaid gift cards up to $500 CAD and/or various proxy services.

See also:

How to sign up privately when vpns are blocked on sites?

I cannot answer that question on your behalf, but I can give you a comparison against my current financial workflow. I only use cash and cryptocurrencies, so any proxy service with the claimed ability to perform any task on my behalf while accepting my preferred payment methods is sufficient for me to consider trusting them to begin with. When bootstrapping trust, I start by requesting small tasks with minimal cost/risk, then as they become fulfilled by the provider, I can choose to scale up or …

Is there a diminishing return in chasing privacy and security?

One of the most important changes I made to my financial workflow a year or so ago was eliminating credit card possession and usage. That eventually leads to a milestone where the credit report/score associated with my legal name will no longer be retained: For better or worse, I was and still am financially responsible, so I have a lot of positive information on the credit score/report that will take TransUnion 20 years to no longer retain.