I came across this petition regarding a tweet from David Peterson, General Manager of Proton VPN, claiming they will work on Monero support this summer if someone makes a petition with 1000 signatures.
I personally haven’t used Proton products because alternatives like Mullvad support Monero which I might as well spend somewhere. It would be cool to see this get 1000 signatures and have more private payment options.
Well, I have good news for you. The request for this on Proton’s own board has nearly 3,000 votes. So seems you met the goal by 3x already! Additionally it’s the #2 voted item in its category behind a request for Nano which does not have the same privacy features.
I wonder why Peterson doesn’t feel those votes are sufficient? I’m not signing up for a 3rd party when it is one of the top requested items on Proton’s own petition board.
“Proton is a Swiss company and Swiss companies above a certain size have to undergo what is known as a mandatory legal audit and to get a legal audit done you need to find an auditing company that is willing to run your full audit generally because Proton is a bigger company that is more credible in many ways we try to go with one of the big four accounting firms right so actually it’s public information because it’s on the Geneva registered to Commerce but actually you know we use PWC as our auditor and the thing about big four auditing firms is they are pretty wary of crypto in general and to pass your audit you need to have very good Revenue recognition because it’s something that you have to do properly so already the fact that we accept Bitcoin has made it so that certain Auditors refuse to work with us and the worry that we have is you know if we do Monero that may further limit the Auditors that are willing and able to work with us and at some point you know that poses a problem for us from a legal standpoint because we required to get an audit and we want to get an audit from a reputable firm so it’s yeah I hate to say it right but Monero has a reputational problem that needs to be let’s say separately addressed first before it can gain more widespread acceptance because for a lot of companies there are real business reasons why they are simply unable to do it”
from Proton Wallet w/ Andy Yen | Opt Out Podcast ~48:56
If you read the post David Peterson of ProtonVPN made it indicates that they will be adding Monero support regardless. Andy’s words make perfect sense and are entirely justifiable, but not really relevant since this is a prioritization issue as they plan to do it anyway.
Petition with 1000 people saying they’d switch to Proton VPN and petition with 1000 people acknowledging they will start using or continue using Proton VPN (or another Proton product broadly) on the condition that Proton will accept Monero as a payment method for their services is not the same.
This reply implies that the ProtonVPN General Manager has already accepted this petition
The official Proton VPN just posted the link to the petition on Reddit:
I would like this very much to happen
We have reached more than 1000 votes!
It just got officially confirmed in Proton Uservoice:
Great. Finally !
Bit funny that his bio says: “no statements here should be considered official from Proton” meanwhile they take it as official source.
This is for Proton VPN only https://xcancel.com/davidgpeterson/status/1941510488707432678#m
Exactly. I’m surprised people are so optimistic. Especially after that April fool’s prank that Proton pulled by announcing they would support Monero. I totally fell for it for a good 5 min.
I’m also curious, why Monero support just for ProtonVPN? That doesn’t make sense.
If Proton want to take it slow, they could support Monero not for buying Proton subscriptions, but for buying gift cards.
Suppose Proton finally supports Monero payments. All of you who are currently paying Proton subscribers, how will your privacy be protected? Even if you switch to Monero, your previous Proton payments are likely linked to a credit card, that Proton and Stripe keep records of for at least 10 years.
Generally ProtonVPN seems to be its own beast sometimes. Doesnt use proton.me domain still protonvpn.com also for the accounts subdomain. It always made me wonder if it the real website…
You don’t need to associate bank details today. ProtonVPN has a free tier (where some Android installs do not require an account. You can deposit cash by mail to your account as credits. Additionally, I believe they accept bitcoin, but I’m not familiar with this method.
You could also purchase Proton gift cards from a peer which Proton support has confirmed to me are not linked to the original purchaser in any way (YMMV).
All of these methods are significantly more inconvenient than Monero, of course. Each time I mail cash to proton I do so without tracking and it is considerably stressful.
You might consider not associating bank details. Once you do - it cannot be removed so long as you not on a free tier. Instead, purchase gift cards from the store and redeem as credits.
Everything you just said is true today. But it wasn’t true in the early years of Proton, and probably not until a couple of years ago.
The point that I’m making is that most people who want Proton to support Monero, have probably paid for Proton with their credit card, and some are likely continuing to do so.
I’m not faulting them. I’m just saying that once you’ve paid for Proton with a method that identifies you, switching to cash or Monero doesn’t erase your payment history. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it, it is IMO, but it doesn’t erase your history.
As far as Proton cash payments are concerned, I have 2 critiques:
1. It’s NOT as anonymous as the Proxy Store.
a) It requires writing your username in the mail you are sending, meaning they will know your name.
b) The post office/courier company requires your name and address, which you can fake in most countries, but it’s harder to fake your country and city.
You can use a hotel address and the name Bugs Bunny, but you can’t fake that the mail is from Los Angeles, California, USA. All this information will be revealed to Proton.
c) The post office / courier service will know you’re sending mail to Proton.
The receiver’s address can’t be faked. In some places sending mail to Proton might make you look suspicous.
2. Proton gift cards are not available in the Proxy Store.
My biggest issue with 1) is a) and b). But even if Proton implements a better way of receiving cash payments directly, I think they should make their gift cards available in the Proxy Store as an alternative.
The Proxy Store is more private and anonymous. First because there is a degree of separation. You’re not paying Proton directly. Secondly, the Proxy Store’s implementation of cash payments is better.
You don’t share your username for anything. You literally just write a code, which to anyone looking will not mean anything. Proton wouldn’t have your name, address, or your country.
Even if Proton had a perfectly private way of implementing cash payments on their own, they should still make their gift cards available on the Proxy Store to support privacy and stand in the company of many other companies who do the same.
