Re: Global untraceable phone calls - is it still a good idea?
Thanks guys for all the feedback! Will not answer to all the posts individually because that would make the thread quite messy. Will summarize my take aways and conclusion.
Regarding untraceability. I will rely on an external SIP trunk to connect to the telephone network, and only god knows what the telco in charge of that SIP trunk wants to do with the traffic. The point was not to make it super-private. It is more untraceable in the same way as good old burner phones that you buy for cash. I.e., the phone call will not be more private, but at least the way you pay for the phone call will be. I would imagine that a WhatsApp call is more private, but with WhatsApp you can't call the regular phone network. I don't have any special measure or secret sauce to make it more untraceable than that. Also, I will not store any information about anything, but you will have to take my word for it, there is no way I can prove that I won't.
Anyway, my key selling point was not really the untraceability part, it is more an "extra" feature. The initial idea is really to scratch my own itch. The main use case, i.e. the itch to scratch is more like the following. I'm a digital nomad, and sometimes I have to call my bank, insurance company, embassy, tax man, or some something other government related back in my home country. If I just buy a local SIM card, it will be expensive. I could of course use Skype or Viber and pay with a credit card, but the process of downloading, signing up and jumping to all kinds of hoops just to make a phone call with those services is quite a hassle. It would be more convenient to just make a Bitcoin or Lightning payment here.
So I think I will tone down the "untraceability" in my marketing, and just call it a service to quickly make phone calls in the browser and pay with crypto.
Yep maybe in the future I can add the possibility to receive calls too, and to send and receive SMS. But just have to start somewhere first...
Related to technical aspects I'm planning to use Electrum running as a daemon. The reason why is that in this case I don't need to download the whole blockchain. I think that with BTCpayserver I do. Please correct me if I'm wrong, and also let me know if there are any specific reasons why BTCpayserver would be better than Electrum.
Alright, will continue to hack on it for a bit, and post an update when I have something to show...
Regarding untraceability. I will rely on an external SIP trunk to connect to the telephone network, and only god knows what the telco in charge of that SIP trunk wants to do with the traffic. The point was not to make it super-private. It is more untraceable in the same way as good old burner phones that you buy for cash. I.e., the phone call will not be more private, but at least the way you pay for the phone call will be. I would imagine that a WhatsApp call is more private, but with WhatsApp you can't call the regular phone network. I don't have any special measure or secret sauce to make it more untraceable than that. Also, I will not store any information about anything, but you will have to take my word for it, there is no way I can prove that I won't.
Anyway, my key selling point was not really the untraceability part, it is more an "extra" feature. The initial idea is really to scratch my own itch. The main use case, i.e. the itch to scratch is more like the following. I'm a digital nomad, and sometimes I have to call my bank, insurance company, embassy, tax man, or some something other government related back in my home country. If I just buy a local SIM card, it will be expensive. I could of course use Skype or Viber and pay with a credit card, but the process of downloading, signing up and jumping to all kinds of hoops just to make a phone call with those services is quite a hassle. It would be more convenient to just make a Bitcoin or Lightning payment here.
So I think I will tone down the "untraceability" in my marketing, and just call it a service to quickly make phone calls in the browser and pay with crypto.
Yep maybe in the future I can add the possibility to receive calls too, and to send and receive SMS. But just have to start somewhere first...
Related to technical aspects I'm planning to use Electrum running as a daemon. The reason why is that in this case I don't need to download the whole blockchain. I think that with BTCpayserver I do. Please correct me if I'm wrong, and also let me know if there are any specific reasons why BTCpayserver would be better than Electrum.
Alright, will continue to hack on it for a bit, and post an update when I have something to show...