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US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

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Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#151

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

krrrh wrote: post #138
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law doesn't care whether the same justification exists. A bitcoin wallet in your house in US is not a foreign asset, since those bits (that representing private keys for bitcoin addresses) are physically in the US.

Right, the existing reporting law doesn’t pertain to assets stored decentralized “institutions” only foreign ones. Presumably that is why they are talking about changing the law.

Right. Exactly. They'll have to change the law so that it does care about personal bitcoin wallets.

Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#152

Post by stale2002 »

EGreg wrote: post #86
stale2002 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and all the coffee shop knows is that you paid them money from an account that has a couple hundred dollars in it. You have your cold storage where most of your money is, and you have new wallets for the purpose of hold your X thousand dollars of general spending money. In the same way that a coffee shop can notice that you have physical dollars bills in your wallet that you just pulled out to pay from. If your…

So now you are on the hook for using coins that have gone through a mixer. The governments have the most leverage over exchanges and whoever "cashes out" Starbucks. If they tell them to stop taking coins that have been through a mixer then what are you going to do? China for example recently banned all exchanges period. We need the majority coins to go through mixers same we need more people to use TLS / Tor / whatev…

I mean, at that point you may as well say "what if the government just decides to ban bitcoin".

But they aren't doing THAT.

Blacklisting certain addresses is arguably 'harder' for the government to do than a simple straight up ban.

Blacklisting address is difficult, as the coins can quickly and easily be transferred to an unexpecting, innocent party. And now all of a sudden ALL coins are tainted.

What, is the average person going to track which coins are on the secret government blacklist and which aren't? If they don't do that then their coins are at risk of being tainted, and now THEY are on the ever expanding blacklist as well.

The government has only 1 option, a blanket ban on all cryptocurrencies. Anything else is just this impossible game of wakamole that will hurt innocents way more than the bad guys.

If they don't do the blanket ban, then the cat is out of the bag.

Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#153

Post by EGreg »

stale2002 wrote: post #152
EGreg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now you are on the hook for using coins that have gone through a mixer. The governments have the most leverage over exchanges and whoever "cashes out" Starbucks. If they tell them to stop taking coins that have been through a mixer then what are you going to do? China for example recently banned all exchanges period. We need the majority coins to go through mixers same we need more people to use TLS / Tor / whatev…

I mean, at that point you may as well say "what if the government just decides to ban bitcoin". But they aren't doing THAT. Blacklisting certain addresses is arguably 'harder' for the government to do than a simple straight up ban. Blacklisting address is difficult, as the coins can quickly and easily be transferred to an unexpecting, innocent party. And now all of a sudden ALL coins are tainted. What, is the average…

I think the proper way to blacklist is by posting an advisory on some list.

And then all payment processors / miners / etc. in a jurisdiction must respect that list.

And everyone else would do well to check the lists because their payment might become not accepted down the line.

Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#154

Post by Retra »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #146
Maarten88 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any right to keep your possessions private from the tax agency? Last time I checked, everyone had to specify everything of value owned, and sign for it, to calculate capital taxes due (I live in the EU). This includes BTC holdings. We have to trust the tax agency to keep tax data confidential. It surprises me that the US needs to change laws to require this only now. I'd say the wording of the old laws were…

The income tax requires violating privacy rights, which is why many libertarians oppose it.

Only if you're committed to the practice of declaring for yourself arbitrary rights.

Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#155

Post by dudus »

cma wrote: post #122
tehlike wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, irs asks you if you have ownership on a foreign account, or finra or something asks you to declare money over 10k when you enter country. They also know your bank accounts by its centralized nature. Now, if they ask you your wallets, not declaring could be considered unlawful if this bill passes. Also technically, wince cryptocoins are commodities, or treated as such, you still need to declare them as a pr…

> you still need to declare them as a profit on tax forms Not until you realize the gain, right? (at least unless you mined them)

Right. But not for mining or splits that could be seen as income.

Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#156

Post by freeloop3 »

tehlike wrote: post #113
garmaine wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renouncing citizenship wouldn’t prevent you from owing uncollected or misfiled back taxes.

Good point. Educate me (since i am not sure about that part of taxes), would exercising your gains and converting them to fiat in a country which doesn't have capital gains taxes (singapore, i think is one?) generate backtaxes? I am thinking: BTC=0 value when satoshi generated them. Now they are worth billions. There is capital gains, but assume he renounced his us citizenship before converting them to fiat. What wou…

He'd pay taxes as if he sold at fair market value. This scenario has occurred time and time again when someone acquires a lot of wealth through investment.

His best option would probably be to create an irrevocable trust which pays him a percentage every quarter. Then he won't owe any taxes on what has already accrued.

Then he can consider expatriation or moving to Puerto Rico.

Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#157

Post by ben_w »

mirimir wrote: post #77
ben_w wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt you could retire. Creating a justification for why your meatspace identity now has money from an anonymous source without tying those identities together is money laundering.

Yes, it is. So you'd need to retire somewhere pretty laid back.

Is there somewhere “laid back” which is not corrupt, which has a functioning police force, and which has its own financial system?

Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#159

Post by akvadrako »

heimatau wrote: post #148
jimktrains2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop using crypto to mean cryptographic currency. Crypto has a well defined meaning.

Fair but context implies I mean CC, as another mentioned. Meaning, devoid of context, is difficult to create. So, please, keep this in mind when you're nit-picking on what you mean.

No, you stop using crypto. This is a terrible language abuse; I don't know how you can defend it.

Re: US Senate Bill S.1241 to Criminalize Concealed Ownership of Bitcoin

#160

Post by Retric »

stale2002 wrote: post #80
Retric wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an account with 100 mill in stolen bitcoins and use it at a coffee shop then looking at security footage is relatively trivial as there is a clear time stamp involved. Cash on the other hand might be traced at the bank, but it it's hard to directly link it unless their is a clear pattern of behavior. Even better, a random 5$ bill may not end up at the bank directly if someone get's change at the end of th…

Cryptocurrencies can be mixed. If you engage in very basic precautions, such as doing something easy like transferring your money to monero, and then back again, it is effectively impossible to track where your money came from. Once you get to the coffee shop stage, nobody knows where that money came from.

Bitcoins's high transaction costs and low transaction rate prevent that from working.
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