i can understand that about crypto. Fwiw, this discussion was posted recently about usenet and crypto, lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/2612428 Others take crypto and several of the ones mentioned take it directly without a processor and have better perf. than the newsdemon system.
the older stuff on newsdemon is hit or miss anyways cause of the way they handle their storage so it will be hard to know if its gone cause they suck or gone cause of takedown.
they all “miss” some content. if it has been taken down from usenet you may just have to look for a repost, seems like everything is reposted 8 different times. if its missing cause its to old then maybe you need the blocknews block for full retention like you said.
Usenight is full speeds only at certain times of the day right? Plus the retention isnt as high so that is probably the price difference. Frugalusenet and Blocknews also take crypto the same way (same owners) and price is a bit more reasonable if you dont need the super high retention all the time but yes i agree about crypto. if you have to use a payment processor for it it sort of defeats the purpose.
no big deal to pay with whatever. could change down the line of course. if paranoid just use crypto or mail them your payment. your providers wouldnt be my first choice, any reason you chose them?