> (Actually I have no idea how easy it is to hide money from the tax collectors using crypto, but I assume that's one of the appeals). Depends on which one but

> (Actually I have no idea how easy it is to hide money from the tax collectors using crypto, but I assume that's one of the appeals). Depends on which one but let's take pure bitcoin because that's what the post is about. Governments have 3 main tools, tracing, freezing and recovering. The breakdown is different in crypto vs fiat. In BTC, the blockchain contains all previous transactions, everything is public. If you send your BTC through middlemen it'll be mixed in with their assets but you can still follow the trail perfectly. So tracing is easier with BTC than fiat, because you won't have to convince some Cayman island bank to hand over the cash. Next, there's freezing, which is harder. You can't block transactions to Iran on the chain, but you can block entry and exit points when trading with fiat, on most exchanges. Since freezing is technically equal to censoring, it's a feature. Recovery is almost impossible, to the point of you can even lose your own private key, let alone someone who stole from you. The government can't produce a valid private key any more than your quad-core IOT fridge. TL;DR avoiding tax is hard to do for retail people, simply because the regulators are watching the entry and exit points. So even if you tornado cashed and zcash yadda yadda and your funds are untraceable you eventually need to buy fiat for them, because you'll need the fiat for the Lamborghini. > rather than trying to hide your savings in untaxable havens. Kinda OT, but why suddenly is tax evasion a problem with retail crypto of all things? We have institutionalized tax avoidance for the biggest players (megacorps & ultra rich) to the point where nobody raises an eyebrow anymore. Seems inconsistent to me.