Thanks for sharing, its been a similar journey for me.
I wanted to do some mining but I didn’t want anyone to know I was doing it, I asked the question in a few forums discord etc and was getting literally no replies what so ever. I suspect there are other ways to do it and with other coins but it all felt too hard for a novice like me.
So I almost gave up, but looked at ipollo website one last time and saw Grin. To be honest I thought it was a joke to start with but the more I looked into it the more I found, like a rabbit hole in a nice way.
Anyway, I figured I could try to mine through VPN and no KYC and it worked! So I ended up reporting my income for tax purposes but only because I wanted to and not because I had to. I figured Grin would never take off if it wasn’t easy and simple to use, solving an important problem.
Anonymous also makes a good point, privacy is only a bonus, while scalability is the true value of Grin. Though for me Grin is returning to the gold standard or paper money, that is not tracked and monitored 24/7.
There are disadvantages however because criminals can commit crimes easier when it is hard to track them. A balance needs to be found between freedom and security.
There are many countries with authoritarian governments and being able to mine and buy grin privately is a platform to addressing human right issues. Governments should be there to help people and when they fail, people should have some way to protect themselves from their filthy rulers.