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El Salvador is the only place on Earth where you can exchange your bitcoins to USD without any questions are being asked. It is the wormhole between bitcoin and
by m00dy 5y ago
El Salvador is the only place on Earth where you can exchange your bitcoins to USD without any questions are being asked. It is the wormhole between bitcoin and legacy financial system.
- colechristensen 5y agoAnd doing things like this are quite likely to make you guilty of money laundering, it can of course be noticed if you’re withdrawing large amounts of money from outside the country.
- m00dy 5y agoThat's the thing. I am super bullish on El Salvador. I think It could be next Switzerland in the new world order.
- vineyardmike 5y ago> I think It could be next Switzerland in the new world order. Could be, but i suspect there are a lot more laws and historic reasons for the swiss status than just banking.
- choeger 5y agoThe irony is that a blockchain is the perfect tool to get rid of any form of money laundering: A permanent public record of each transaction. You can always run a simple program that checks your financial history against a blacklist. Now the problem with such a system is also quite obvious: Money laundering poisons the whole economy. If you could follow every dollar, you would likely find out it was at some point part of the profit from a criminal operation.
- oh_sigh 5y agoI'm curious how long that is going to last. Can the US not allow El Salvador to use US currency?
- anonporridge 5y agoHow would they stop them? Invade and depose the democratically elected president, then setup a puppet government to do their will?
- nawgz 5y agoYou got it!
- anonporridge 5y ago'murica! Fuck you now do what we tell you!
- dilap 5y agoThat'd be extreme, but there would be all sorts of possible ways. See eg https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-...
- 09bjb 5y agoIt wouldn't be the first time...or second, or third, or fourth, or fifth... Source: https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409 https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Cha...
- Permit 5y agoLots of jokes about invading or overthrowing the gov't but I believe they would just cut El Savador off from the U.S. financial system entirely. The same thing was applied to a handful of Chinese and Hong Kong officials. See: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3098691/how-us-uses-dollar-payments-system-impose-sanctions-global https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3098691/h... > The extensive and complex nature of the US financial system means non-US international banks would most likely comply with the Hong Kong sanction requests to safeguard their overseas network and US dollar-denominated transactions that are ultimately cleared in the US by passing through the US Clearing House Interbank Payments System (Chips). My understanding is that if you do not comply you are basically unable to trade in USD.
- mrtksn 5y agoI'm not sure it's true. Crypto is very popular in Turkey too and you can easily sell your coins for fiat Turkish lira, withdraw the money to your bank account in seconds any time of the day and convert it to USD - no questions asked. Then you send that USD anywhere or withdraw it from a branch or an ATM(that supports USD, there are plenty). Also, 45x the economy, 15x the population with significant percentage of it having at least one exchange account. No question asked when bringing money from abroad is the governments policy, strong EU, UK and US financial ties and integrations are in place with billions already laundered. The neighbouring Bulgaria, the police seized 200K Bitcoins and sold them at the previous bull market. I know what you mean but El Salvador is a micro-wormhole. The value essentially comes from the publicity, they had something like 700 BTC last time I checked. El Salvador is a storm in a teacup. One noisy storm though. Their president is a millennial who knows how to ride the hype train.
- inter_netuser 5y agoisn't the difference that the entities in El Salvador are obligated to take it? Questions or not, that's a different story, but Citibank in Turkey is not obligated to accept Bitcoin, but in El Salvador - they are under a legal obligation to accept it. Citibank is active in El Salvador.
- mrtksn 5y agoYes, that's the difference. However the volume in El Salvador is so small that it's insignificant in any real terms. It's a poor country with a tiny population. They certainly wont be able to exchange you USD for BTC and vise versa if you try to do it with a significant amount.
- panarky 5y agoClassic Innovator's Dilemma.
- m00dy 5y ago1-) If your transactions have low volume, no one is going to question what you are doing. The problem arises when you have a lot of Bitcoins and couldn't really explain where they come from. El Salvador fixes this. 2-) Sending/Receiving USD is not as free as you think. You can get sanctioned like IRAN. Every foreign USD transfer must be checked through a blacklist. That's how it works.
- paxys 5y agoThe questions will still be asked at some point. Are you exchanging it for cash? If so, how are you getting the cash back to your home country? If to a local bank account, how do you transfer it back to the US (or another country) without raising flags?
- zaik 5y agoThis is likely a solved problem for people who are in the money laundering business.
- Geee 5y agoWhich countries are you referring to? No identification is required when exchanging peer to peer, and it's not illegal to exchange peer to peer. I don't know any countries where this would be forbidden. You can use service like https://hodlhodl.com https://hodlhodl.com to exchange peer to peer without questions or identification. If you're using your bank account, then it's not completely private. However, cash trades are always possible. On the other hand, Chivo requires strong identification with passport, so it's hardly a wormhole.
- m00dy 5y agoI'm not talking about p2p exchange. I'm talking about injecting your bitcoins to legacy financial system without any question.
- gruez 5y ago>and it's not illegal to exchange peer to peer. I don't know any countries where this would be forbidden. You're right that it's not technically illegal, if you can somehow find another private person (ie. not a business) to transact with, but good luck finding a supply of those. I suspect someone that makes those transactions enough would get classified as a money service business and would be subject to KYC/AML requirements.
- modeless 5y ago> No identification is required when exchanging peer to peer, and it's not illegal People have been prosecuted for the crime of exchanging bitcoin for dollars in person-to-person meetings. It's probably not illegal to do it once for a small amount for a friend, but it absolutely is illegal in the US to do it regularly or for many people or for large amounts.
- goldcd 5y agoYou post me dollar bills and your address, and I'll send you back BTC for a 10% deduction. Or you could buy/sell some art anonymously? Or just pop down to vegas?
- newsclues 5y agoIf this allows US dollars to be laundered for drug money this is actually not a terrible idea.
- perl4ever 5y agoI know of an ATM that claims to deal in bitcoin, in the basement of a government building in the US. I don't know how it works though, as I haven't tried it.