Wouldn't they have to validate a paying customer to tie it to an IP aswell? If there is a point where a user is identifiable, it can't be rolled back with a "trust us" in my opinion if the focus is privacy.
As someone with high privacy focus, just having a user id given by stripe, that stripe then can connect to a real person is a liability. Mullvad allows payments in crypto and their site is accessible as an onion service. I know it definitely adds overhead to do both of those things, though personally I wouldn't mind paying a lot of extra for it. I'm not sure which fraction of users are like me though, I might just be an unviable customer
High earning does not necessarily mean wealthy. Rich people in my eyes don't even need to work. People also often gain more money by not spending everything all nilly willy. Someone inheriting a lot of money is more likely to spend it on something superfluous than someone that meticulously grew it over their lifetime.
It's probably more about the very generalizing statement at the beginning that isn't adding anything to the conversation. The core of the issue seems to be that Kagi doesen't support anonymous payment, which kills it in my eyes unfortunately.
A single leak could ruin your social relationships. Extortion bots are untiring and neverending. Just a moment ago our countries largest mental health institution had an IT-catastrophe, and thousands of influental people immediately got automatically extorted by bots.