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Comment by ttul | Hacker News Reader

Today, an 80-year old client of a friend's financial services firm wrote: .

"Hi. Thank you for your excellent stewardship of my retirement savings all these years. You have helped us change a lot of things, and weather some pretty terrific storms like the Fall of 2008. I am now focused on a higher risk-reward trade off, and will be entrusting my son to invest my assets into the brave new world of crypto currencies. With thanks, please kindly close all of my accounts and begin the process of moving my funds to my son so that he can purchase Bitcoin."

I am not kidding. This, folks, is how the world ends.

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The fact that he's gambling on bitcoin is not the only problem. As you near retirement (or in this guys case, are retired), you want to reduce your risk profile. If my life savings disappear in my young 20's, no big deal, I can rebuild them. At 80, if that money goes, it's gone for good.

I feel really sad reading this. This can only end in tears for people like this old guy, or the people buying BTC with their credit card, or the people taking out mortgages to buy crypto.

Jeez, if I were the financial adviser of someone this old and receiving this letter I would want to make sure that my client was still in his right mind and not being cleaned out by a nefarious relative or other con-person.

> I am now focused on a higher risk-reward trade off

Yea, no kidding!

The silver lining is that at 80, he won't have to live in penury for very long.

It makes sense from his perspective, yolo, plus it might be his son's inheritance anyway so what does the 80-year-old care?

Well I wouldn't be thrilled on losing my life-savings, no matter what age.

YOLO!

Can you transfer money to your son in the US? That should be tax evasion.

Where I am from, that order would be totally illegal. ain't happening.

I don't think that is illegal or tax evasion anywhere in the world. Depending on the amount and the jurisdiction and whether the son gains ownership of the funds (rather than just the power to invest them), the firm might have to report this transaction and the son might have to pay for taxes.

It is illegal and it is tax evasion in some jurisdictions.

1) Transferring your money directly would allow to avoid inheritance tax.

2) Some jurisdictions have hard limits on what you can "donate" to your children. It can be "low" like 100k per 10 years.

No, it becomes tax evasion if you do this and then fail to pay the applicable tax on it.

In the same way, it's not tax evasion to have a successful business, say, making a million dollars selling shoes, even though there are limits on how much money you can make selling shoes before you have to pay tax on it. It is tax evasion if you make a million dollars of taxable income and only pay enough tax for half a million.

Do you have a specific jurisdiction in mind where this transfer would be tax evasion?

It looks like we're both in agreement that there are legal requirements beyond "just transfer all the money to my son".

Point being. When the client ask "transfer the money to my son and close my account", he usually doesn't mean "take 30% off, transfer what's left to my son and close the account".

You can have a look at France. I am not sure what paperwork is needed to make it legitimately, it's non trivial.

In the context provided it sounds like the client meant his son would be taking over as the steward of investvesting his money and was going to put it into BTC. This is not illegal in any way. It’s not any different than having an investment manager in the first place, other than it sounds like an objectively terrible idea.

It’s pretty common to move around retirement accounts in the US, the most popular type are tied with your job and frequently move when you change employers.

In the UK on the other hand there is no paperwork at the time. You just transfer it. If the old guy dies within something like 8 years though it should be included in his estate.

You can transfer money to whoever you want. All you need todo is to write a check.

You're wrong on so many levels. Try writing a 100k check to someone and bank it, you'll understand that the world doesn't work like that.

I don't know about checks (we don't really use them here in Germany) but I see many 100k bank transfers and that's an absolutely routine thing to do, even across national borders (but you might need to file some anti-money-laundering and statistical documentation).

I would be really surprised if you couldn't transfer 100k (or 1M or 100M) anywhere. Sure, the recipient might need to pay taxes on that.

Yes, the bank can freeze the funds and request the recipient to justify where it came from, that's my point.

For international transfers, I've seen some getting cancelled without notification, the money is just sent back. It's weird.

and for bitcoin at any point you want to cash in or out 100k into real money: you'll probably have to go through KYC too

I read that as moving to the son's control, not literally gifting the money to him.

That could make sense, but I don't see how "closing all the accounts and moving the money to his son" would be a simple administrative change.

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