In my opinion, this is not politics, one cannot promote oneself, so a professor should be there to honour your presence and contribution on the mats with a stripe.

Yes.

There's a good conversation on this topic in this thread:

https://www.beltchecker.c[...]in%20forum

Just as a point of clarification, Belt Checker does not promote people. It is nothing more than a means of logging your promotions and having them verified by the community for cases like yours where a promoting professor is no longer available.

To the point of your question, you can claim a stripe on your black belt via time served. It happens all the time. This website supports the time served degrees on a black belt and the community would likely verify that promotion as long as the lineage and timelines are appropriate. But it's generally more highly respected when an actual person puts a stripe on your belt for you, which would require you to find a new professor to study under. That may not be of interest to you, and that's fine. All it means is that someon may overlook your profile for a verification vote, but plenty of others will probably check the box anyway.

In fact, you do as you feel... when it's time to past by time served, you ask the community to check your journey and if you got enough votes, what means normaly at least a few Black belts or higher had voting for you, so by this standard you deserve your promotion, you can wear it or just knowing it, but it will be important when you gonna be able to promote some of your students to black belt

Per ibjjf degrees are automatic based on time at BB so you don’t technically have to have someone else stripe you up but most people still have either their promoting professor or another higher ranked BB do it.

An option, in my humble opinion, would be to use beltchecker to document your journey. Then, as your time for promotion nears, maybe one of our senior respected members in your area would be willing to drop by your academy to award you the degree that you deserve. That's one of the multitude of benefits being a part of the community can offer. I personally have never felt comfortable touching the degrees on my belt. I cant even put stripes back on after they fall off. Honestly saying that out loud it sounds like some sort of "Sensei has a kendo stick" PTSD response.

Uncle Carlos and a stripeless belt is my plan!