[notch898a]

Lol so if I send BTC to a friend overseas and they use it on their ancapworld exchange or whatever that is legal in their 3rd world shithole, then suddenly that BTC is banned from ever entering the first world again?

The only way I see this kind of works is if they ban crypto in general, and then ban cash in the mail too. Oh yeah and ban foreign trade, because as long as it's legal somewhere else you can spend XMR in THAT country in the form of importing goods to the US and then sell those goods for cash. We're talking about bits in the ether, and unlike with bitcoin at least to our knowledge the public ledger is not traceable. Seems like a tall order.

[tsimionescu]

Yes, they could declare any exchange that offers XMR to customers as banned, and no financial institution that trades with that exchange would be allowed to trade with a US bank. That's how US sanctions typically work. Most likely, that exchange would quickly stop offering XMR trades itself.

And even if they didn't, that BTC could indeed no longer be allowed in the US controlled banking system (which is far larger than the West).

Of course, if your friend were able to redeem buy actual goods for XMR and send those back to you, great. But what goods vendor would want to own XMR in a world where no institution that does business with banks would want it?

Note that what I'm saying is not purely theoretical - this is the status of Tornado Cash - where they went so far as to arrest developers of that. And banned BTC also exist - there are BTC that are illegal to own, and wallet addresses that are illegal to trade with.

[notch898a]

Your points are taken, may rebuttal would be that monero is only worth at most about $3B and that much value is easily captured outside the banking system. It seems like one of those scenarios that will require a gargantuan effort in practice and at best you end up with drug-war style penalties without even choking out the lions share of the value, and even if you do something else just takes its place. It would really pain me to see my country going down that path again, but history does have a way of repeating itself.

[runnerup]

> then ban cash in the mail too

I mean, yeah this is already done. Over $10,000 requires you to file a FinCEN Form 105. The point isn't "you can't send money" its "The US government only wants to allow systems to exist in which it knows who/what/when/where about any non-trivial sized transaction."

If there's an auditable/subpoenable record, they're happy. If not, they're not. Right now they're "not happy" about XMR. Some day they'll ban it.

As for ETH/BTC<-> XMR they'll probably ban that too. Not from a technical perspective but more like "if we catch you sending ETH to that Russian XMR exchange we'll prosecute you."

[notch898a]

Honestly banning cash would be one of the easier things to do, but I don't think what you've said is necessarily true.

I cannot offer legal advice here, but my understanding is if Bob in NY has the fantastically idiotic idea to send $100k through the mail to cousin Suzy in CA, he wouldn't be violating in laws by not filling out the 105 or IRS 8300. He's not engaging in a trade/business and the money is not leaving the borders.

[runnerup]

I meant internationally, domestic cash transactions don't currently have reporting requirements per se. Most domestic cash mails would eventually reach a magnitude large enough to meet a reporting requirement for sales tax, 1099-MISC, gift tax, etc.