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If you bought your bitcoin with legit money, and then you exchanged the bicoin for a house, and you're doing your taxes correctly, how could that be money laund

If you bought your bitcoin with legit money, and then you exchanged the bicoin for a house, and you're doing your taxes correctly, how could that be money laundering?

yashg 5y ago
Why shouldn't I buy the house directly with legit money then? Why add one more layer and pay some amount in commission and also deal with volatility in BTC prices?
- shrimpx 5y ago
  That's a fair question but in if it's legal, why does it matter? People make their own financial decisions.
  - logifail 5y ago
    A few years ago I was earning a fair chunk of loyalty points (and hence air miles) by buying gift cards in supermarkets, then immediately depositing the full value of the gift cards into a savings account of mine. This was entirely legal, and I was Making My Own Financial Decisions™, but the route got shut down pretty quickly anyway.
  - yashg 5y ago
    If I am in a country from where I can legally send money to Dubai to buy property, should I still convert money to BTC for buying property? Common sense says no. It may be legal but I don't need to add another layer of complexity. If I am in a country from where I cannot legally buy a property in Dubai, would buying a property via BTC route be legal? Definitely not. The only scenario in which it makes sense to buy property directly in BTC is if I had bought BTC years ago when it was cheap, it would be better to convert it into a real asset like an apartment in Burj Khalifa and convert my on paper wealth into real wealth.
    - shrimpx 5y ago
      The core scenario in which it makes sense to buy property in bitcoin is if you already hold a ton of bitcoin. Then, selling the bitcoin in order to pay fiat for a house is the more cumbersome route to take.
- jimmydorry 5y ago
  There are all kinds of limitations in how exactly you are allowed to use your money. And settlement of such a large amount of funds between two parties is not simple and fraught with danger if you "do it alone". Bitcoin or your blockchain of choice has no such issues though! You can prove to your seller that you have the funds, as well as even pre-commit the money in a smart contract, or a multi-sig transaction. Doing so would completely remove the need to wait on the slow and inefficient banks to do their thing.
  - yashg 5y ago
    > There are all kinds of limitations in how exactly you are allowed to use your money. Where are you getting that from? If the money has been earned in a legit manner and you want to spend it on a legitimate thing, who's stopping you from spending it? Yes if your source of money isn't legal or you want to spend on something illegal, that's a different story.
    - jimmydorry 5y ago
      My money is completely legal, but it was a protracted process to: A.) Transfer a part of it (for this particular bank, anything more than $5000) to pay a deposit for a house; B.) Make a final settlement on a house, again with money I had available in my account. There are limitations on how much you can transfer easily at once, and different kinds of approval and parties have to be involved to pay for something large.
      - logifail 5y ago
        > it was a protracted process When we bought this property, the least drawn-out bit of the overall process was the actual transferring of the funds. That was the easy part :) It was the same with vehicles we've bought, the fastest part of the process was transferring the funds from buyer to seller, by far(!) Are there (m)any significant transactions where the moving of money from buyer to seller is the bottleneck in terms of time and/or effort?
        5y ago
jopsen 5y ago
> If you bought your bitcoin with legit money How easy is it to actually buy 5M USD of bitcoin? Assuming you have legit money? And why would you move legit money out of the banking system? Assume you have 5M USD in bitcoin, can you sell it and deposit that in your bank without lots of money laundering questions that are hard to answer? My two cents is that if you have legit money, you will want to keep in the banking system, and avoid risks of being accused of money laundering.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > How easy is it to actually buy 5M USD of bitcoin? Assuming you have legit money? I was going to say, "Can't be too hard; Musk does it with hundreds of millions" (billions?). But then again, maybe it takes three assistants two days each time; he can afford that.

If you bought your bitcoin with legit money, and then you exchanged the bicoin for a house, and you're doing your taxes correctly, how could that be money laundering?

yashg 5y ago

Why shouldn't I buy the house directly with legit money then? Why add one more layer and pay some amount in commission and also deal with volatility in BTC prices?

shrimpx 5y ago
That's a fair question but in if it's legal, why does it matter? People make their own financial decisions.
- logifail 5y ago
  A few years ago I was earning a fair chunk of loyalty points (and hence air miles) by buying gift cards in supermarkets, then immediately depositing the full value of the gift cards into a savings account of mine. This was entirely legal, and I was Making My Own Financial Decisions™, but the route got shut down pretty quickly anyway.
- yashg 5y ago
  If I am in a country from where I can legally send money to Dubai to buy property, should I still convert money to BTC for buying property? Common sense says no. It may be legal but I don't need to add another layer of complexity. If I am in a country from where I cannot legally buy a property in Dubai, would buying a property via BTC route be legal? Definitely not. The only scenario in which it makes sense to buy property directly in BTC is if I had bought BTC years ago when it was cheap, it would be better to convert it into a real asset like an apartment in Burj Khalifa and convert my on paper wealth into real wealth.
  - shrimpx 5y ago
    The core scenario in which it makes sense to buy property in bitcoin is if you already hold a ton of bitcoin. Then, selling the bitcoin in order to pay fiat for a house is the more cumbersome route to take.
jimmydorry 5y ago
There are all kinds of limitations in how exactly you are allowed to use your money. And settlement of such a large amount of funds between two parties is not simple and fraught with danger if you "do it alone". Bitcoin or your blockchain of choice has no such issues though! You can prove to your seller that you have the funds, as well as even pre-commit the money in a smart contract, or a multi-sig transaction. Doing so would completely remove the need to wait on the slow and inefficient banks to do their thing.
- yashg 5y ago
  > There are all kinds of limitations in how exactly you are allowed to use your money. Where are you getting that from? If the money has been earned in a legit manner and you want to spend it on a legitimate thing, who's stopping you from spending it? Yes if your source of money isn't legal or you want to spend on something illegal, that's a different story.
  - jimmydorry 5y ago
    My money is completely legal, but it was a protracted process to: A.) Transfer a part of it (for this particular bank, anything more than $5000) to pay a deposit for a house; B.) Make a final settlement on a house, again with money I had available in my account. There are limitations on how much you can transfer easily at once, and different kinds of approval and parties have to be involved to pay for something large.
    - logifail 5y ago
      > it was a protracted process When we bought this property, the least drawn-out bit of the overall process was the actual transferring of the funds. That was the easy part :) It was the same with vehicles we've bought, the fastest part of the process was transferring the funds from buyer to seller, by far(!) Are there (m)any significant transactions where the moving of money from buyer to seller is the bottleneck in terms of time and/or effort?
      - 5y ago

jopsen 5y ago

> If you bought your bitcoin with legit money How easy is it to actually buy 5M USD of bitcoin? Assuming you have legit money? And why would you move legit money out of the banking system? Assume you have 5M USD in bitcoin, can you sell it and deposit that in your bank without lots of money laundering questions that are hard to answer? My two cents is that if you have legit money, you will want to keep in the banking system, and avoid risks of being accused of money laundering.

CRConrad 5y ago
> How easy is it to actually buy 5M USD of bitcoin? Assuming you have legit money? I was going to say, "Can't be too hard; Musk does it with hundreds of millions" (billions?). But then again, maybe it takes three assistants two days each time; he can afford that.