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Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

This won't work in the US. It's very hard to get USD out of Bitcoin. And then the IRS will want to know where you are suddenly getting a huge amount of money from.

You could use localbitcoins to offload one coin at a time on an as-needed basis. That'd be pretty sweet, and the IRS won't be able to know anything strange is happening if you avoid depositing your USD into a bank. But paying rent in all-cash is rather sketchy. I wonder if drug dealers deal with similar problems.

I don't know how plausible this is, but the localbitcoins route might also open you up to being kidnapped. You'd need some pretty decent opsec to avoid revealing that you have a massive amount of BTC you're trying to offload.

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Why is it very hard? Can't one simply use Coinbase?

> And then the IRS will want to know where you are suddenly getting a huge amount of money from.

In my experience, the IRS is largely unconcerned with where you are getting money from. They just want you to declare it, and pay taxes on it.

If you treat Bitcoin as ordinary income and pay taxes on it at the highest available rate, the IRS will largely be satisfied. If you treat Bitcoin as a long term investment and attempt to only pay capital gains tax.... well then the IRS will become curious enough to ask for 'proof of origin'.

I think coinbase's withdrawal limits aren't quite high enough for this amount of cash

A bit. They limit to 10,000 per day which would be 300 transactions total for $30 million.

I'd personally call them and get a contract out before funneling this kind of money through their system.

Though that's pretty normal. A regular brick and mortar bank would likely want additional assurances before funneling $30 million into or out of an account that doesn't see that regular volume.

You're saying you could declare "I now have $30 million in assets" on your IRS forms and it wouldn't trip any alarms?

I mean, I don't personally know which alarms would be tripped, or what effect that would have. But that just seems so unlikely.

It'd be fascinating if this were true, though, so any info would be appreciated.

Re: coinbase, it'd be foolish to use them because they have a history of disabling accounts for any reason they feel like. A friend of mine had their account disabled, so I know firsthand this is true. Also it's unlikely they'd send you such a large amount of money unless you were a business in good standing or had a long history with them. (I'm just guessing, though.)

Tax forms don't have a place to declare assets, iirc, only income.

Right, so I guess I was asking: If you cash out everything as quickly as possible, no one from the government will ask where your millions came from?

Sure they will ask. And you can say something like "I was an early bitcoin investor". Or "I trade cryotcurrencies".

It is perfectly reasonable to be a cryto trade that never withdraws to USD, and just makes money by transferring between crypto currencies and ICOs or something.

I am sure there are a whole lot of people out there who spent a thousand dollars or so back in 2009, and now they have 10 mill in the bank. It is not like any of that could be tracked.

And then you pay long term capital gains on that money, and you are set.

I guess I'm skeptical of the idea that they won't ask for proof of your trades, which would lead to discovering you were a thief. But I suppose that's highly unlikely.

I suppose but this sub thread was a reaction to someone mentioning that it was hard to get USD out of Bitcoin. It's not about laundering money from illicit transactions.

The IRS has this interesting FAQ on their webpage

> https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.html#en_US_2016_pu...

Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.

>You're saying you could declare "I now have $30 million in assets" on your IRS forms and it wouldn't trip any alarms?

Technically, it's illegal for the IRS to do so without third parties coming to them or suspicions of terrorism. In practice, they probably rat people out to LE agencies regularly.

Someone I know tried depositing btc sale proceeds to their wells fargo bank account. The bank promptly froze all their accounts. It eventually worked out I believe but it doesn't seem as easy as 'just sell them.'

If you buy all your food, drinks, and lunch in cash for life. That's pretty good savings.

Given that you don't need to work anymore, there's no issues with just moving out of the US

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