5 ms·
Bank secrecy is dead* To imagine that bitcoin could change that or not abide is foolishness. * for poor people anyway, with poor meaning < $10 mil which affor
by 21 9y ago
Bank secrecy is dead*
To imagine that bitcoin could change that or not abide is foolishness.
* for poor people anyway, with poor meaning < $10 mil which affords you lawyers and offshore shell companies
- mirimir 9y agoWell, bank secrecy is as dead as governments can make it, for obvious reasons. However, for cryptocurrencies, it's mainly exchange interfaces with meatspace currencies that are hard to keep private. If you use local wallets like Electrum, transact via Tor, mix thoroughly, and generally practice good OPSEC, your personas and their cryptocurrency can be as anonymous as you like. But only as long as you maintain compartmentalization from meatspace.
- lordCarbonFiber 9y agoSo long as you never use your currency to buy anything you've got a great anonymous currency. Sounds very useful.
- stale2002 9y agoIf a coffee shop accepts bitcoin, your transaction is effectively as untraceable as cash is today. The more that people use bitcoin, the more useful it gets and the harder it is to stop.
- CryptoPunk 9y agoFYI, Bitcoin can't be used for coffee purchases anymore, due to throttling of transaction throughput, but Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum can.
- throwaway613834 9y ago> If a coffee shop accepts bitcoin, your transaction is effectively as untraceable as cash is today. How? There is no globally public record of all cash transactions, unlike with Bitcoin.
- teawrecks 9y agoBecause at no point is your identity tied to the address.
- Retric 9y agoIf you have an account with 100 mill in stolen bitcoins and use it at a coffee shop then looking at security footage is relatively trivial as there is a clear time stamp involved. Cash on the other hand might be traced at the bank, but it it's hard to directly link it unless their is a clear pattern of behavior. Even better, a random 5$ bill may not end up at the bank directly if someone get's change at the end of the day. Worse it's not just the government that can track bitcoins. I can easily see a gang keeping an eye on transactions looking for people with large accounts so they can use physical means of persuasion to liberate it.
- stale2002 9y agoCryptocurrencies 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.
- 21 9y agoWith today statistical analysis methods is trivial to track big flows through various block chains, even if some of them are totally hidden. And they only get better by the day, with your traces sitting there like a duck. And you don't need to be 100% certain, it's enough to get a pool of suspects which then you can analyze/surveil with other methods.
- tehlike 9y agoHow about monero?
- 9y ago
- mirimir 9y agoThat's true only if you practice good OPSEC. You must be using a wallet that's not associated with your meatspace identity. Not in any way. Not through bank accounts, IP addresses, etc. Nor through any Bitcoin transaction. Once a wallet is associated with you, all past and future transactions involving that wallet are also associated with you. So it's prudent to have many wallets, and to always mix when transferring among them.
- tehlike 9y agoNot entirely. Monero enables this by default, though.
- mirimir 9y agoYou must compartmentalize. You can buy and sell anything that isn't linkable to your meatspace identity. With enough virtual wealth to hire the right consultants, you could probably retire comfortably somewhere.
- ben_w 9y agoI 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.
- mirimir 9y agoYes, it is. So you'd need to retire somewhere pretty laid back.
- ben_w 9y agoIs there somewhere “laid back” which is not corrupt, which has a functioning police force, and which has its own financial system?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tehlike 9y agoI am curious its implications on capital gains. If you retire in a place with 0 capital gains, then would your home country tax you? I do not know the answer.
- ben_w 9y agoDepends on both countries. If I understand correctly, if you’re from the USA you owe taxes on worldwide income regardless of where you earned it. I have no idea if that applies to capital gains or not, nor how other nations treat worldwide income — not even my own nation.
- X86BSD 9y agoOr you could just, use a secure anonymous coin like say monero and forget all this time consuming effort to try and anonymous a non anonymous coin.
- mirimir 9y agoOnce Monero is accepted more widely, sure.
- tehlike 9y agoyou mean, like bitcoin isn't?
- mirimir 9y agoYou might be surprised at what's available for Bitcoin. Servers and VPN services. Consultants. Plus stuff via dark markets.
- tehlike 9y agoSo the very niche market. I guess my point is, still bitcoin is mostly speculation - the stuff you talk about wouldn't add up to billions of dollars of marketcap, for example.
- mirimir 9y agoYes, of course it's mostly speculation. But it's funny for someone on HN to be characterizing what I mentioned as "niche market". I mean, what more than capital, servers and consultants does one need for a startup?
- tehlike 9y agoWhy do you need bitcoin for that? I don't see the relation.
- tehlike 9y agoMonero could. Fungible, and private by design.
- mkempe 9y agoNot in Switzerland -- as long as you are neither US citizen nor US resident.