[DennisP]

Yes, you can store wealth in place by burying money. What you can't always do so easily is move it. But you can transfer bitcoins anywhere in the world without anyone blocking the transfer, and you can carry them in your car in a hardware wallet without fear that a cop will confiscate them.

Countries like Russia are looking for a way to move beyond the world dollar standard because the U.S. is able to shut down international dollar transfers for particular countries and banks, and uses that capability somewhat liberally. The U.S. probably can't do that to cryptocurrency, so I'd say it does in fact solve a problem for Russia.

A lot of us vote to change things. I've also gone to protests, gotten involved in party politics, all that stuff. It's not that effective anymore. 80% of the country wants net neutrality and a couple million people took the trouble to file comments with FCC; it made no difference at all. At some point you have to stop begging and start inventing things. As Buckminster Fuller said, "To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

[acdha]

> But you can transfer bitcoins anywhere in the world without anyone blocking the transfer, and you can carry them in your car in a hardware wallet without fear that a cop will confiscate them.

As soon as they’re converted to/from real money, they fall under the same restrictions as everything else, and most of the places you’d want want to live share restrictions on unregulated financial transactions. Similarly, while there’s egregious abuse of cash seizures it’s not like the cops haven’t heard of other stores of value. If they suspect you’re doing something serious, following the money in is what already leads to headlines about police selling large quantities of Bitcoin — and that hidden hardware wallet is going to be seen as proof that you’re hiding something.

That latter point is the key one: there are a lot of people in jail because they thought they could hide money. I would not bet on having the opsec necessary to remove money from your accounts without leaving a trace, and with Bitcoin any mistake means you’ve left an irrevocable evidence trail behind.

[DennisP]

I'm not talking about hiding money. Plenty of people have had large amounts of perfectly legal and reported cash confiscated from their vehicles. They're often able to get it back eventually but only by suing. With a hardware wallet the cop can take it, but it won't make any difference.

All of which is beside the point of the actual article, which is about Russia using crypto to get past sanctions.

[acdha]

I agree that forfeiture is a huge problem but I’m missing what Bitcoin adds to this versus, say, just not keeping large quantities of cash. I don’t hear about cops running charges on people’s cards, for example.

[Frogolocalypse]

I'm actually confident that America will eventually get it right. I expect that America, when backed into it, will legislate your rights to protect the fruits of your labour. And then they'll have the moral authority again. They're just going to have to work harder in diplomacy. Which they are quite capable of doing at times. Underrated? Treaty with Iran. Iran ain't really in the news of late? That is better.

But to your question, keeping $1 million in cash, all legitimately acquired, in your house, which could be seized under the flimiest of pretenses, is madness. Bank? Gold? No thanks.

It's going to happen eventually. You might as well figure out how to get used to it. In spite of how the US sometimes is, they have inevitably come down on the right side of history.