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1) With a telephone and a banker, all it takes is 10 minutes to do the same wire transfer. At worst, it would require a fax machine to sign the paperwork. 2)

1) With a telephone and a banker, all it takes is 10 minutes to do the same wire transfer. At worst, it would require a fax machine to sign the paperwork. 2) This is wishful thinking. Large currency transfers by law need to be reported by most states, whether Bitcoin or not. A thousand dollars is not large ($10k is typical). Your scenario here is effectively saying it's easier to break the law with bitcoin. All you are doing is putting the legal burden on the exchange.

bmelton 13y ago
I think that casts the action in an unnecessarily negative light. Is BTC considered 'currency' by the US government? Do its transfers necessitate reporting to the government? If I sent a thousand dog biscuits to my home land, does the government need to be involved? Under what law?
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  > Is BTC considered 'currency' by the US government? Do its transfers necessitate reporting to the government? If I sent a thousand dog biscuits to my home land, does the government need to be involved? Under what law? Almost certainly, under a variety of money laundering laws. You can't just convert cash into diamonds/gold/Bitcoins and thumb your nose at the authorities saying "look, no currency!"
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Sending money back home is a far different scenario than laundering, and the assertion that it is assumes bad faith from the beginning. I'm not suggesting you don't have a point, but the idea that BTC has value is, I think, arbitrary at this point. There are thousands of leaves littering the lawn in my back yard right now -- surely I could send those to a foreign land without having to declare it, right? An argument could be made that they have more actual value than a crypto-currency at this point, as they're a tangible good. Similarly, if I send $10,000 worth of virtual roses to friends on Facebook, the government is not interested, and I haven't seen anything that convinces me, at the moment, that BTC should be treated differently than any other all-digital good.
    - ceejayoz 13y ago
      > Sending money back home is a far different scenario than laundering, and the assertion that it is assumes bad faith from the beginning. The government can and will assume bad faith in any transfer involving large amounts of money and/or items of value. > Similarly, if I send $10,000 worth of virtual roses to friends on Facebook, the government is not interested, and I haven't seen anything that convinces me, at the moment, that BTC should be treated differently than any other all-digital good. Actually, I believe Facebook would be required to report that transfer to the IRS.
      - bmelton 13y ago
        > Actually, I believe Facebook would be required to report that transfer to the IRS. I believe you're right, because there's a cash transaction there, and cash has intrinsic value. But if I 'bought' LTC with BTC that I mined at a cost of idle CPU cycles, where's the intrinsic value? The market rate for CPU cycles is far less than the value of the equivalent BTC (or, at least was initially). If I'm holding $1 million dollars in a bank, I would be subject to capital gains taxes on its interest earnings. If I'm holding 1 million BTC on my hard drive, I'm not. If I paid for those BTC, that's a bit different than if I mined them early. I'm not trying to be difficult, so much as point out that there's still a long way to go before you can actually say that BTC is currency, and that even if we do determine that it is currency, that it's subject to the same rules and regulations as actual currency or commodities. If I paid capital gains taxes on BTC holdings yesterday, vs waiting til today, I'd have 'saved' approximately 15% due to market fluctuation. As there's no real 'anchor' to the value of BTC at the moment, I think there are just more questions than answers, really.
- parasubvert 13y ago
  Every country on earth has export reporting and foreign currency exchange laws. Between the two, there is always monitoring (for large transactions) and regulation (tariffs, duty) of international trade and capital flows. Keep in mind it was illegal in the USA to actually export crypto source code for keys of a particular strength in the 1990s - it was viewed as a "munition". This is why web browsers had 40-bit and 128-bit SSL versions. Those were lifted eventually due to efforts from the software/web business lobby. However, it still is also illegal to export many classes of goods and services to particular nation states that are undergoing US sanctions. if your homeland is Iran or Syria, for example, you're not going to be sending dog biscuits. If it were Pakistan, you probably could - but it would have to be reported as part of the export manifest with FedEx or DHL. Same goes for electronic transactions like bitcoin.
mschuster91 13y ago
1) Nope. This initiates the transfer - but (at least here in Europe) it will take at least one bank day if you're sending money across different bank chains. So, bitcoin is faster in the full cycle. 2) There are reasons you do not want the state knowing what you do. The less the state knows, the better.

bmelton 13y ago

I think that casts the action in an unnecessarily negative light. Is BTC considered 'currency' by the US government? Do its transfers necessitate reporting to the government? If I sent a thousand dog biscuits to my home land, does the government need to be involved? Under what law?

ceejayoz 13y ago
> Is BTC considered 'currency' by the US government? Do its transfers necessitate reporting to the government? If I sent a thousand dog biscuits to my home land, does the government need to be involved? Under what law? Almost certainly, under a variety of money laundering laws. You can't just convert cash into diamonds/gold/Bitcoins and thumb your nose at the authorities saying "look, no currency!"
- bmelton 13y ago
  Sending money back home is a far different scenario than laundering, and the assertion that it is assumes bad faith from the beginning. I'm not suggesting you don't have a point, but the idea that BTC has value is, I think, arbitrary at this point. There are thousands of leaves littering the lawn in my back yard right now -- surely I could send those to a foreign land without having to declare it, right? An argument could be made that they have more actual value than a crypto-currency at this point, as they're a tangible good. Similarly, if I send $10,000 worth of virtual roses to friends on Facebook, the government is not interested, and I haven't seen anything that convinces me, at the moment, that BTC should be treated differently than any other all-digital good.
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    > Sending money back home is a far different scenario than laundering, and the assertion that it is assumes bad faith from the beginning. The government can and will assume bad faith in any transfer involving large amounts of money and/or items of value. > Similarly, if I send $10,000 worth of virtual roses to friends on Facebook, the government is not interested, and I haven't seen anything that convinces me, at the moment, that BTC should be treated differently than any other all-digital good. Actually, I believe Facebook would be required to report that transfer to the IRS.
    - bmelton 13y ago
      > Actually, I believe Facebook would be required to report that transfer to the IRS. I believe you're right, because there's a cash transaction there, and cash has intrinsic value. But if I 'bought' LTC with BTC that I mined at a cost of idle CPU cycles, where's the intrinsic value? The market rate for CPU cycles is far less than the value of the equivalent BTC (or, at least was initially). If I'm holding $1 million dollars in a bank, I would be subject to capital gains taxes on its interest earnings. If I'm holding 1 million BTC on my hard drive, I'm not. If I paid for those BTC, that's a bit different than if I mined them early. I'm not trying to be difficult, so much as point out that there's still a long way to go before you can actually say that BTC is currency, and that even if we do determine that it is currency, that it's subject to the same rules and regulations as actual currency or commodities. If I paid capital gains taxes on BTC holdings yesterday, vs waiting til today, I'd have 'saved' approximately 15% due to market fluctuation. As there's no real 'anchor' to the value of BTC at the moment, I think there are just more questions than answers, really.
parasubvert 13y ago
Every country on earth has export reporting and foreign currency exchange laws. Between the two, there is always monitoring (for large transactions) and regulation (tariffs, duty) of international trade and capital flows. Keep in mind it was illegal in the USA to actually export crypto source code for keys of a particular strength in the 1990s - it was viewed as a "munition". This is why web browsers had 40-bit and 128-bit SSL versions. Those were lifted eventually due to efforts from the software/web business lobby. However, it still is also illegal to export many classes of goods and services to particular nation states that are undergoing US sanctions. if your homeland is Iran or Syria, for example, you're not going to be sending dog biscuits. If it were Pakistan, you probably could - but it would have to be reported as part of the export manifest with FedEx or DHL. Same goes for electronic transactions like bitcoin.

mschuster91 13y ago

1) Nope. This initiates the transfer - but (at least here in Europe) it will take at least one bank day if you're sending money across different bank chains. So, bitcoin is faster in the full cycle. 2) There are reasons you do not want the state knowing what you do. The less the state knows, the better.