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by woodruffw 1571 days ago
“Civil forfeiture” does not and has never meant “fiat forfeiture.” If the government tells you to forfeit your assets (justly or unjustly!), you can be certain that they will not be amused or deterred by attempts to hide those assets via cryptocurrency.
1 comments
vageli 1571 days ago
> “Civil forfeiture” does not and has never meant “fiat forfeiture.” If the government tells you to forfeit your assets (justly or unjustly!), you can be certain that they will not be amused or deterred by attempts to hide those assets via cryptocurrency.

If they don't know it exists, they can't take it. Just like I can cross the border with a hundred thousand in crypto in a wallet. And even if they find the hardware wallet, that is not enough to seize the funds, especially if it's a brain wallet or something similar. The same simply doesn't exist for fiat.

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gamblor956 1571 days ago
Just like I can cross the border with a hundred thousand in crypto in a wallet.

No, you can't. You can cross the border with the private key for a wallet containing the addresses of a hundred thousand units of crypto, but the crypto isn't in your wallet (either kind), it's in the blockchain ledger of whatever cryptocurrency you're using.

And this is an important distinction from money, because the money is actually in your wallet and you can use it without an internet connection, but the crypto is actually in the cloud and requires an internet connection to access and use.

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vageli 1569 days ago
Interesting. Just for fun, thinking through this more I could just give someone my private key instead of transferring funds on the blockchain. Then the transaction does not require the internet, only the verification of funds in the wallet (which could be elided if the participants so chose).
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woodruffw 1571 days ago
> If they don't know it exists, they can't take it.

I've said this before: any financial system that turns a presumed crime (the efficient cause of the asset seizure) into direct evidence of another crime (trying to hide assets) is not a good financial system.

What you're describing doesn't exist in practice for any medium of exchange.

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