The Framework one is interesting. We will use renewables to power cryptocurrency payments, eventually, or we will have bigger problems than cryptocurrency energy use. I can see the point they’re making, I guess.
This is such a terrible idea, and not great for Monero’s image.
I’ve been speaking to a developer of a small privacy project who sought legal advice on taking Monero payments in his country of residence for his product and was advised not to go that route.
Calling people hypocrites because they don’t do what you want them to do is a pretty superficial stance, not smart at all.
I imagine it will get more places accepting Monero. I doubt any will stop accepting it because of this project. Of course, Monero is completely decentralized, we can’t control what people do in its name.
I am not sure it is a negative project. Perhaps they can help bring private payments to more privacy companies. I’m sure the creator of MoneroShameList would remove a project if they messaged and mentioned that Monero is illegal in their jurisdiction—otherwise, I think it is an important commentary.
I had an llm create a list of the info Stripe—which a lot of privacy projects use for a payment processor collects and how it uses it according to its privacy policy. I think it is hypocritical for privacy companies to claim such lofty things in their privacy policies about their ideals and practices, while only allowing trad-fi payments.
Obviously we should appreciate privacy projects/companies for doing what they do for privacy, they are still way better than the alternatives, but the financial side is a huge privacy nightmare that shouldn’t be overlooked.
ps I have a friend in Russia that can’t pay for privacy services online with fiat money. They can’t even pay for many things because Visa and Mastercard do not work. The only way he would be able to would be with crypto—and the only safe way would be with Monero. He was rightly interested in it and I helped get him started with it.
I imagine it is similar in Iran and even many people in the UK might feel that way.
It wouldn’t even necessarily be that, but just that accepting XMR could get your registered business into all kinds of complications and red tape with uncertain outcomes. This is something a startup wouldn’t have the time of funding or desire to deal with. It’ be interested to find out how Mullvad does it.
THIS IS THE WRONG WAY TO GO ABOUT IT
I mostly agree. I don’t take any issue with having a website that lists all the privacy services that have yet to support Monero. However, framing it around shame is a bad idea, especially when you don’t know their reasons and have not exhausted all possible solutions. I don’t think this kind of approach for this specific issue is conducive to the result that you want.
- Have the creators of that site even asked those services why they don’t support Monero?
If it had a different name and had asked each and every service why they don’t support Monero and included their answers, it would be more useful. I’ve also noticed that Proton, the biggest privacy company, is not listed. Neither is Tuta or Addy. I find that curious.
Supporting Monero generally means supporting direct payments via Monero, and that is not the case of Proton, Tuta or Addy.
- If the reason you haven’t listed those services is because you know that they have alternatives, why aren’t you campaigning for those alternatives?
You are not making your case well. People forget that Monero is only a means to an end. It’s the only cryptocurrency that’s anonymous by default, yes, but accepting Monero directly is not the only way for those services to accept anonymous payments.
GIFT CARDS & PRIVACY-FRIENDLY RESELLERS
You could ask those services to sell gift cards on privacy-friendly reseller platforms like The Proxy Store and Cake Pay, which both accept Monero. The Proxy Store also accepts cash which is easier for the average person. This is what I’m trying to do with Proton.
THE CASE OF MEGA
MEGA used to sell gift cards. Did you know that? I don’t know if they still do, but the platforms they sold it on were websites that were not very well known and, hence, hard to trust. They were not privacy-friendly. However, there was one privacy-friendly platform that MEGA supported, and that was PaySafeCard.
PaySafeCard works like a universal gift card with fiat currency on it that you can use to purchase from any service that accepts it. I used to buy PaySafeCard vouchers to renew my MEGA subscription completely anonymously. PaySafeCard vouchers could be bought online with a credit card, which is not anonymous, but they could also be bought in many stores across the world with cash. That’s how I bought them.
But years ago, MEGA inexplicably stopped supporting payments via PaySafeCards. PaySafeCard also had its own issues. Your voucher could get locked if they suspect something, and the only way to get your money back is to provide them with your ID, receipt, address, and bank account details, so they refund you to your account.
CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT PAYMENTS VIA THE PROXY STORE
If you really want to compel those services to support anonymous payments, ask them to sell gift cards in the Proxy Store. It’s the easiest and most effective way to support anonymous payments. Supporting Monero indirectly is better than not supporting Monero at all. It’s even better for privacy.
When you ask those services to sell gift cards in the Proxy Store, make sure to tell them they should work as credits (in fiat currency) that are available in small ($20) and larger amounts ($50-$100). Privacy services that sell vouchers that don’t work like credit can be very limiting.
FINAL THOUGHTS
There is great power in coming together collectively and asking for those services to support anonymous payments in one way or another. But shaming them like this is not the way. At best, it should be a last resort. But you have not exhausted all the possibilities. And you are not making your case clear, as you aren’t suggesting alternatives.
It sounds like all you are asking is for those services to support direct payment via Monero, when that is not the only solution. I would change the name and tone of the website and start working on compelling these services to support payments via the Proxy Store.
Calling it a shame list…is a choice. The decision to not accept monero isn’t binary, so using the word shame doesn’t sit right with me.
Yes, good idea
Lots of the ones on the list don’t really benefit from Monero. Like, do you really need to pay X or Telegram anonymously? They are not pro-anonymity and want your phone number to sign up (there might be workarounds). I wouldn’t say they are pro-privacy either.
I just found this website. Very powerful. https://monerostats.org/
I hear you, and there is an argument to be made that they should not be listed as a priority, but there is value in being able to anonymously buy services that are not privacy-friendly.
CakePay sells gift cards from a lot of retail and online stores (Amazon, The Gap, etc..), that don’t give a crap about privacy, but there is still value in buying them that way. It’s one shield of protection even if it doesn’t protect you completely.
Some people in this community have asked how to buy from Amazon anonymously, using a gift card that was bought with cash or Monero is a key piece of that puzzle. I have a Telegram account that is linked to a virtual number. I understand Telegram is not private, but I am mitigating my risk by using a virtual number, using a VPN, and being careful what I say in chats, and making all my messages self-destruct.
Telegram is not private at all, but the fact that they market themselves that way warrants a call-out. That being said, since Telegram has its own cryptocurrency, I am doubtful they would ever support Monero.
Seems interesting, though it looks like an AI-generated website rather than one built with love and care by a designer, which strikes me as quite lazy and I hope there’s interest in rewriting it to not be slop. That being said…
I do think it’s good for privacy-focused companies to accept Monero if they can, although one thing I wish was more practical was purchasing things which aren’t necessarily tech with it. Cash usually works fine enough especially if you live in a city with local alternatives to most things that in a more remote area, you’d need to buy online, and generally small, local businesses prefer cash anyways because there’s no ridiculous merchant fees that pay for consumers’ cashback rewards (ask me how I know, lol).
Considering that LLM training and usage is also quite a significant usage of energy, I don’t think Framework has much of an argument, since they use AI slop in their rust libraries and tooling. At least they did disclose their use, unlike with the Monero Shame List, which seems to have no such disclosure despite being slop as-well.
Yeah it would be cool if more brick and mortar businesses accepted it. For now there’s https://cakepay.com/cards/. It’s not that crazy to have to get a gift card as an intermediary. Think about it like a debit card so you can spend from your bank account. Would it be convenient if you can spend straight from your bank(Monero wallet)—yes that is ideal, but it’s not insane to need a single intermediary to get from your “bank” to the payment.
I like to think about how impressive it is that Monero has all this adoption when it is totally optional. A hundred years ago you would sound crazy if you said that a random group of people, with little power—not a country— could start a currency that is not particularly easy to get started with and it would become a staple with its own economic, thousands of businesses accepting, and many consumers preferring it.
It took the US a long and perilous road to become a stable currency. There wasn’t a central bank for a while and state banks all had different looking bills that they made themselves. It was mayhem, there were countless bank runs, panics, and depressions. People lost their savings, the economy crashed.
It has been almost 250 years since the USA was created and there was even a giant recession in 2008. Clearly, the US took a while to learn how to manage their currency, and yet Monero is just 12 years old and has had no hyperinflation, huge innovations in cryptography and privacy, extremely secure, convenient, etc.
Here’s a good summary of history of money problems in the usa - Brave Search .
A note on the name
The “Shame List” framing is tongue-in-cheek. This isn’t an attack project, a boycott campaign, or an attempt to harm anyone’s business. Most companies listed here are doing genuinely useful work in the privacy space — the point is simply to highlight an obvious contradiction (privacy-focused companies that won’t accept the most privacy-preserving cryptocurrency) and give them a friendly nudge to add XMR support.Add Monero, come off the list. That’s the whole point.
NOT MENTION OF THE PROXY STORE OR GIFT CARDS? 
Thanks for this. I did not know they had a list of proposed solutions, and yet I am still shocked that there is no mention of The Proxy Store, Cake Pay or gift cards. WHY?
The people who created this site deliberately did not mention services like Tuta and Addy. It must be because they know that Tuta and Addy sell gift cards on the Proxy Store which can be bought anonymously with Monero. There is little doubt in my mind that they are aware of the Proxy Store, and they fail to mention it. This is an epic failure IMHO.
IMHO, the Proxy Store is the most effective way to make anonymous payments widely available, because they don’t just accept Monero, they also accept cash.
WHERE’S THE COMMUNITY CARE?
I sometimes get the impression that some people in the privacy community are so enamored with Monero and other cryptocurrencies, that they don’t care about other anonymous payment methods. What I mean is, if the services listed on this website accepted direct payments via Monero, I suspect some Monero fans wouldn’t care to advocate for The Proxy Store and cash payments. They’d say just learn how to buy Monero. At least that is the impression that I am getting.
I would encourage everyone to learn how to acquire Monero and other cryptocurrencies if they wish, but we have to recognize that it will always be a challenge, and hence a hurdle, for some people. Especially when you consider that buying Monero anonymously is another obstacle to overcome.
ABOUT SHAME:
I understand that the shaming may be tongue in cheek, but those services might not take it that way. And since they have to be persuaded it’s better to be polite and friendly in your early approaches.
Tuta is mentioned The Monero Shame List — MoneroShameList.com
The site is brand new, but it is made by Monerica.com and others in the community. feel free to contribute. it is being updated frequently, suggestions are welcome.
Where is the tongue-in-cheek bit?
The ‘Submit a company’ button feels witch hunty.
You can state the intention is tongue-in-cheek and say it’s meant to ‘give them a friendly nudge’, but the tone of the site has to support that description given in the About page.
TUTA
Wow. They mentioned Tuta on the mixed support list. I did not expect that.
This is disappointing IMO, because you are still getting what you want, in a very accessible way, just not exactly the way that you wanted.
I am all for encouraging privacy companies to support direct payments via Monero, but if they already support the Proxy Store, and there are no restrictions, we should take that as a win and focus on services that don’t support any anonymous methods.
I’m sad to be reaffirmed in my belief that some people only care about direct payments via Monero. People forget that Monero is only a means to an end.
PROTON
I see that Proton is also on the mixed support list, and I have expressed my own criticisms of their alternative payment offerings, but I see no mention of them here, which suggest that the creators of this site are not aware of the shortcomings I highlighted.
They also say that Proton doesn’t mention Monero on their website, but they do.
Though I do think it is misleading to say so when it’s not directly. That kind of statement needs to be qualified.
In my post where a criticized Proton, I explained that I understand their stated reason for not supporting direct payments via Monero.
We have to recognize that although they may not have given a reason, other privacy services operate with the same thinking in mind. That doesn’t mean we should give up on persuading them to accept Monero, but we should focus on alternative solutions in the meantime, like the Proxy Store.
STILL THE WRONG APPROACH
I maintain that this is still the wrong approach, but I believe they can fix it. Again, I encourage them to take the time to ask every single one of these services why they don’t accept Monero, and document it. Focus on the services that don’t accept any for anonymous payments whether it is directly or indirectly.
They should also put the Proxy Store on their list of solutions. IMO, it should be at the top. Once you understand the reason why some services don’t accept Monero, you should propose easy alternatives, and IMHO the Proxy Store is the easiest for everybody, not just crypto fans. Don’t forget that Monero is only a means to an end.
Listing projects that don’t accept donations via monero is also certainly a choice. Like your not even losing out on anything.