00:00 - Hello, I'm Seth Simmons, and welcome to a special episode of Opt Out. Opt Out's a show where I sit down with passionate people to learn why privacy matters to them, the tools and techniques they've found and leveraged, and where we encourage and inspire others towards personal privacy and data sovereignty. What's the best way to buy and sell Monero while maintaining personal privacy? This episode, we're sitting down with Alex, owner of LocalMonero, the newest sponsor of Opt Out.

Welcome on to Opt Out, Alex. - Thank you, Seth. I think it would be more accurate to say I'm a co-founder. - Ah, okay, there we go. - Get the details straight. Awesome, I have been a long time user of LocalMonero. I thankfully got on the Know Your Customer, Know KYC exchange train a little bit earlier, and just was really enjoying what I found at LocalMonero. It's a very unique service, and it's always my first recommendation to people who are wanting to get into Monero specifically, and it's something that I recommend above centralized exchanges and even other decentralized options.

I really do enjoy the product. - Thank you. - It's very straightforward. I just really, really have enjoyed using it. - Thank you. - So I'm really excited that you've decided to come on as a partner of Opt Out and sponsor me and sponsor the show. It really means a lot to me with just all that y'all do in the space, what you built on LocalMonero, and I'm really, really honored. - I mean, the feeling's mutual. We love your content, and you've been giving us so many shout outs, and then every time we see it, we love it.

So yeah, it's just a natural progression of our relationship, I feel. - Yeah, for sure. Try to shout out LocalMonero every chance I get on Twitter. So it's a good place to keep front of people's minds. I'm hoping people keep pushing that way. But for listeners who aren't familiar with you or with what LocalMonero is, do you mind introducing them? - Sure. So I'm co-founder at LocalMonero and Agridesk. We've been operating the biggest peer-to-peer trading platform that Monero has for the fifth year now.

We've just celebrated our four-year anniversary a couple of weeks ago on August 25th. - Congrats. - Thank you. - And in 2019, we also launched Agridesk, which is like an extension of our platform to also include Bitcoin. The way that it overlaps is that LocalMonero only supports Monero, and then Agridesk supports both Monero and Bitcoin. But the back-end is essentially the same. Your account is the same account, both on Agridesk and LocalMonero. And say if you're like a seller that's on the website, and you want to offer both Monero and Bitcoin, you can just post your offers on Agridesk, and your Monero offers will be seen on LocalMonero as well.

And anybody who's using LocalMonero to access the platform, as opposed to Agridesk, will be able to see and respond to your offers and get their coins and all that stuff. So really, it's like the same back-end. The reason we keep LocalMonero around, and not just completely migrate everything to Agridesk, is because LocalMonero is a very strong brand. And for a lot of people, simplicity is also very valuable. So if they see multiple coins on a platform, it starts scaring them away, as opposed to something as straightforward as just LocalMonero.

So, yeah. I'm glad you got into that, because that was a question I didn't think of beforehand, but I've always been a little confused with what the crossover there is. So I'm glad to have some clarity myself, for sure. Yeah. What was it that woke you up to the need for personal privacy? I mean, with how you've implemented LocalMonero, all the privacy-preserving options, like a native hidden service address, an onion address, a native no JavaScript mode.

There's lots of obvious focus on privacy and LocalMonero, but what was it that woke you up to the need for personal privacy? Don't forget an EAP site, I2P. This... I don't think I've ever seen any other crypto project that's that's sort of widely used that ever implemented an EAP site. No, me either. But anyway, yeah, I don't think... I don't think there was a moment where I woke up. There was no this Snowden moment for me, you know, like, I don't feel...

I just always felt this way. I just always felt protective of my own personal privacy. It's just my nature, I feel. Just born private. Not born private, but it's just like, you know, as you go through life, it feels like privacy is important. It just feels that way. You can't explain it. I mean, you can try and guess where that instinct comes from, but it's speculation at best. And like when in... What was it? 2013 or 2014, when the Snowden revelations came out, I was not surprised at all.

I always just sort of assumed that that was going on. I was completely unsurprised. And I was way more surprised at other people's surprise than I was at the actual revelation. Like the extent to which the story blew up. I just... Because personally, I assumed that it was obvious that they were doing this this whole time, the way that it was sort of everybody like, "Oh my God, I can't believe they're doing this." It's like, of course they are. I mean, that's how it works.

I don't know. Anyway, I just... Yeah, I don't think I ever woke up. I just felt that way this whole... my whole life. I think that's a first for that answer on the podcast. So that's interesting. Oh, okay. Unique. And what was it that made you decide to create LocalMonero? And then why did you choose to build it around Monero specifically? Right. So, like I've been a fan of crypto from the early days. And I remember the days when nobody was talking about Bitcoin's sort of lack of privacy.

I mean, now there's a lot of people talking about it, but it didn't used to be an issue. In fact, people assumed that it was anonymous and private. I mean, it might be anonymous if you're very careful about never reusing addresses and never having your name be connected to any address. You could, like, theoretically, with perfect actions, you could make it anonymous, but it's definitely not private. And that's something that I understood back when nobody was talking about it.

And so I was very interested in whether this technology can be used, can be modified, rather, in a way that would rectify that problem. Right. Right. And over the years, you sort of stumble upon Monero if you're interested in that kind of stuff. Right. Right. And immediately, you know, it ticked all the right boxes for me. It was it was an open source or is rather an open source project sort of driven not by a company, but but just by volunteers who believe in the say the values that that are professed in the cypherpunk manifesto or whatever.

And and anonymous founder, no pre mine, no dev tax, no trusted setup, none of the other stuff that that immediately disqualifies so many of the other points in the sort of privacy coin arena. I don't like the term privacy coin, though. And yeah, like, OK, that's that's how I became sort of a fan of Monero specifically. And after that, there is there's the like when you become a fan of a certain coin and you feel that it has potential and you feel that it's it's the way to go.

And for me, that's that's what Monero feels like. It feels like it should have been Monero and not Bitcoin that that occupies the the number one space for everything. So once you see that there are certain aspects of the Monero ecosystem that are lacking compared to, say, Bitcoin, you want to fill that gap. And one of the things that lacked in Monero was a peer to peer trading platform like local bitcoins. So, you know, thus you decide to create LocalMonero.

Nice, nice and nice and simple. And it is I mean, it's still a gap even. It's something that's the Monero community itself has been trying to rectify for a while. And LocalMonero has been a huge part of making Monero accessible to people. I mean, it's made it accessible to me and especially for those who kind of realize why privacy matters and realize that buying it on a

10:00 KYC exchange or buying it just completely with ID attached and everything could still be a bad idea in general. Definitely. I'm glad the LocalMinerals filled that gap so far and been a huge part of that. Yeah, and we have Havino coming up soon. So that's going to fill even more the gap if there's anything even left of the gap after Havino fills it. So good times are coming, unless, of course, something happens. We don't know. Hopefully not. Hopefully both things can prosper and we can have nice decentralized peer-to-peer on-ramps.

Hopefully. And despite, I mean, despite a lot of the people who create fear over actions by certain governments or certain banks or corporations that are being taken against privacy coins and privacy technologies. I mean, I don't think this is something that you can stop. And one other thing about privacy is that the kind of people that would be very interested in these technologies would also be the kind of people that would be doing whatever they're doing without announcing it to everybody.

So whenever a government wants to go after privacy coins, they're very loud about it and all the supporters are very loud. But those who are opposed to that, by their nature, they operate in a more clandestine way, so to speak. So for every instance of repression, there is also the counter, the reaction to that. But the reaction never gets as loud as the repression itself. Do you see what I'm saying? Do you see what I'm trying to say? Yeah, those things can continue on in a non-public, non-announced, nice kind of a parallel economy or parallel community way.

Exactly. Yeah, I definitely see that. And what is it that makes LocalMonero to you a powerful tool for users who are taking steps to reclaim their personal privacy? Well, we don't require KYC ID verification. We allow people to operate using whichever payment method they wish. I mean, some traders do, in fact, employ ID verification on the platform, mainly the traders that accept payment methods, such as bank accounts or something reversible, maybe like PayPal, because they're worried that they're going to get scammed.

So it's not like all of our traders are completely KYC-free. The platform itself does not impose KYC. But some traders may impose KYC, depending on the payment method that they offer and their personal risk tolerance. So, I mean, the main aspect of LocalMonero as a powerful tool is that we give this way for you to use our website such that it is essentially as difficult to link your personality to the coins as possible. We have a decentralized network of traders.

We have Tor portals, EAP site. We have Node.js. We don't sort of monitor what's going on because it's all private trades between two individuals. And, I mean, the only time we ever step in is in case of disputes or in case we get reports of suspicious activity. Maybe somebody who seems like they're using like a stolen bank account because maybe on one trade they pay using one name and then on another trade they pay using another name. And then a concerned seller would approach us and describe that.

And we'd take steps to sort of figure out if this buyer really is suspicious or not. And, I mean, that's basically our – we try to be as hands-off as possible. We're believers in the free market regulating itself to a large part. And we just play a role as primarily as arbitrators. That's our main business really is just arbitrating disputes and offering a platform. So, like a classified ads magazine, you know. So, it's like a classified ads magazine with an arbitration court built in.

That's basically the business. Yeah, and I think what people don't often connect the dots with cryptocurrency is that a lot of times you may right now be fine with your government, your bank, et cetera, knowing that you have and use cryptocurrency. Because in most places it's legal. There's not a lot of issues. It seems like tax things are coming and there's other legal kind of pressure that's going to be coming. But right now it's generally fine.

But I think what a lot of people don't connect the dots with is that the fact that you, for instance, have Monero and use it could be something down the line that could be used against you, that could be used to oppress you or oppress the people that you interact with. Yeah. And having a way to acquire that tool. And I would kind of relate it to like using Tor browser to download a private chat app and into in chat app or something that you don't want.

Yeah. Maybe your ISP knowing you're using this chat app or this service. So you do it over Tor to hide that. I kind of view LocalMonero as a similar thing and that you can hide that you are acquiring Monero and hide that you own Monero in order to protect yourself either now or in the future. And that's a very important piece of privacy. And while Monero itself is a privacy preserving cryptocurrency and it protects your privacy when you're using it, if everyone knows you own and use Monero, it could be a bad thing down the line.

So it's important we have access to Monero in a private way. That's exactly right. It's a very similar argument to what the Second Amendment for our US listeners has in terms of the sort of ability to have guns. I mean, a lot of people disagree with this argument, obviously, but just as an example, the ability to sort of have guns is in a way a check on tyranny. Whether or not somebody with a rifle is effective against drone strikes is a separate question.

But what sort of the ability to have privacy in your finances is kind of a check against financial overreach by the government. Whether you think it's legitimate or not, there has to be a certain balance of power between the people and the government. And that balance of power has been shifted in the financial sort of realm of things has been shifted so radically towards the government that it's very toxic, right? The inflation rates, the deficits, which is not just a US phenomenon.

It's very much a global phenomenon. Not all countries have a national debt, but all countries are sort of connected to each other and especially to the US dollar, which is the biggest probably sort of the biggest imbalance that exists right now in the financial sphere between people and government. And is that the US government through printing money and through controlling all the international sort of banking. Well, not all of them, but the overwhelming majority of the international banking operations through SWIFT and just, you know, your basic US dollar hegemony facts that everybody knows about.

There needs to be a second amendment equivalent to that. And Monero, I think, or any other potential sort of fungible, decentralized electronic money. When I say fungible, that does include private by definition. There cannot be a fungible, decentralized electronic currency without it also being private, as I'm sure your listeners understand. That is kind of like the second amendment equivalent for the people in the realm of finance, in the realm of the economy.

And it's extremely important, just like security is extremely important, you know, second amendment. Your finances, your private property rights are just as important. Unless, of course, you don't believe in private property rights, but that's a whole separate discussion. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a great point comparing it to the second amendment and that Monero can be a deterrent against financial tyranny. in the same way that...

20:00 that arms can be a deterrent against physical tyranny or governmental tyranny. I think that's a very good connection that I don't think I'd fully made either. What are some future plans that you have for LocalMonero that the listeners should know about? Future plans. Well, we do have features coming up, but all of that is sort of minor adjustments, tweaks, polish, and all that kind of stuff. There are some major features, but if that's okay, I'd rather not talk.

Understandable. About them. We like to, in the spirit of Monero, we like to keep things private. I mean, honestly, one of the nice things with LocalMonero is that, like you said, it's a simple concept. I think it's implemented very well, but like you said, you're trying to be as minimal in the process as possible. And so there's not necessarily a ton that's needed there because it really just needs to be a platform to connect people and give them the right tools to handle those connections and those trades.

But it doesn't need to be overly complex or flashy or that kind of thing. Yeah. It doesn't need to change its interface once every year like YouTube or Facebook. And then the last question I have for you is, what made you decide to partner with Opt Out, with me at Opt Out here, and support the show financially? All your great content. All your great content, your dedication to your craft and to the ideas of privacy and security. And I mean, you've been in the community for a long time.

And I think everybody respects you very much. And it's a pleasure to be sponsoring your podcast. Thank you. Like I said earlier, I'm just very honored that you chose to support Opt Out. I'm such a huge fan of LocalMonero and your ethos. So I'm glad that we can partner here and I can help spread the word about LocalMonero as well. Awesome. Well, what's the best way for listeners to learn more about LocalMonero if they still have questions? And then how can they support what you're doing with LocalMonero?

Our website is locomonero.co. We have, as mentioned, Tor gateways and I2P gateways. But I'm not going to spell them out here. Oh, missed opportunity. I mean, it's what, like 128 characters? I forgot. Or 64. No, it's a very long URL. But you can look it up at the footer of our ClearNet website. I'll put it in the show notes. Make it a little easier. Save you the time. Yeah. Oh, actually, our EAP site is pretty simple. It's just lm.i2p. We got that one.

Nice. But how else can... Well, I mean, we have a subreddit, rlocomonero. We have a Telegram group, at LocalMonero. That's where most of the discussion happens. We have forums, forum.locomonero.co. How can they support what we're doing? They can open an account. And if they're able and willing, they can post a trade offer and see if anybody responds. And I can guarantee that if your offer is lucrative enough, and especially if you offer a payment method that no other trader offers, you're going to get responses.

If you're looking for maybe a side hustle, perhaps this would be something you'd be interested in. Yeah, I think there's a lot of great ways for people to get plugged in and, if nothing else, help onboard other users into Monero and into privacy. And the peer-to-peer nature also lends itself towards educating the people that you interact with and building relationships outside of that. There's a lot of great things that come with trading peer-to-peer rather than just trading through kind of a big, monolithic, centralized exchange.

Yeah, and a lot of people post sort of threads on the subreddit, on the Monero subreddit, that, you know, how can I help? And they often get recommended things like run a node and start mining, which is fine. It's a great thing to do if you run a node and if you mine, but not everybody wants to have like a computer on 24-7. And this would be like an alternative way to be a node instead of being a node in sort of the blockchain network. You're kind of like a node in the ecosystem if you're offering to exchange on LocalMonero.

Yeah, definitely agree there. Well, thank you so much for coming on again, Alex. It was great to get to chat and really excited for the future. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Opt Out. If you did, please take a moment and subscribe to the podcast. Or if you're already subscribed, share it with one friend or family member this week. As always, you can check out the links to our guest content and contact info, as well as links to all of the tools we discussed in today's episode in the show notes or at optoutpod.com.

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