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Comment by ohazi | Hacker News Reader

Yes, money launderers and tax evaders would like to continue laundering and evading -- I think the real question is why are we making this easy for them?

Buying property with ill-gotten gains is an extremely common method of money laundering. Having a large hoard of cryptocurrency that you prefer not to liquidate screams "I'm trying to pretend that this isn't a taxable event."

We don't let people pay their mortgages with pre-tax stock gains, why the fuck are we bending over backwards to let people pay their mortgage with cryptocurrency?

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Payment with crypto is a taxable event whether it is converted into USD or not. You will pay capital gains or income on the delta of the value of the currency at the time of transaction.

This doesn't make it any easier to evade taxes than it would if you paid with cash. The IRS can subpoena your payments and tax the value of the crypto at time of transaction. If you don't report the sale (payment) of the asset on your taxes, there will be a mismatch that is easily traceable.

This is just the real estate industry adding artificial value by catering to the crypto market.

First, this can already be done using MakerDAO CDP loans. Convert crypto to DAI using a CDP loan and then convert DAI to USD to purchase a property. Second, there are many people that own cryptocurrency that are not money launderers and tax evaders who might like the convenience of paying their mortgage with cryptocurrency.

Also doesn't have to be DAI, any stablecoin works.

People worked up that this would enable money laundering seem blissfully unaware how easy it already was to begin with.

It's so strange to me that Hacker News of all places has a very vocal anti-crypto, anti-decentralization crowd whenever any news like this comes out. In other threads they're unironically complaining about "big tech censorship" or the increasing control banks have over one's life!

The ease at which we let foreigners buy our American Real-estate has been bothering me for years.

I can't prove it, but it seems like too much foreign capital that is buying our land is ill gotten, and allowing crypto is just going to make it worse.

I believe we are the Only country that allows foreigners buy property with a phone call, or email.

It's cyclical, Japanese folks were buying lots of U.S. real estate (and other assets) in the 1980s, then it fizzled out. [0]

[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-02-21-mn-2588-s...

It needs to go in the other direction - it should be easy for anyone to buy property anywhere.

Hmmm. It is not easy for foreigners to buy property in most of Asia (except commonwealth-influenced jurisdictions like HK, Australia) from what I gather. It does not strike me as unreasonable. Prices in London for example are hard to afford for the people who actually live there because so much property has been bought by people who don't live there.

Okay. You're attacking the symptom, not the problem. Make it easier to spend your money how you please.

It should be reciprocal. We shouldn't allow foreigners who block land sales to us to buy our land.

There are many with crypto who struggle to get the normal banking system to touch their money. And, no, the vast majority of those are not engaged in any sort of illegal activity.

It’d be much easier to just pay my mortgage in crypto, then the endless back and forth that happens to get a bank to take crypto proceeds. (Count yourself lucky if they don’t shut down your entire account!) Crypto users are much like sex workers in this regard.

When my crypto startup launched, it was nearly impossible to find a bank to give us a checking account. We were literally walking around with a VC check and nowhere to cash it. Just because we had the words “cryptocurrency” in our charter. 99% of the banking system hates crypto. This is a smart move to deliver value to an underserved, now very wealthy, customer segment.

> There are many with crypto who struggle to get the normal banking system to touch their money [...] 99% of the banking system hates crypto

The current top comment says "cryptocurrency continues to occupy more and more ground in the financial world. Cryptocurrency continues to expand and grow by every conceivable metric".

It feels like cryptocurrency advocates flip freely between positioning crypto as embraced by the mainstream financial system, or as a foil to the that system, whatever serves their purpose.

This isn't a personal indictment, it's just an observation reading the comments, especially since I shockingly "remain skeptical" per that same top comment.

I buy a house with a mortgage, I owe $1k a month or whatever to this company to pay my mortgage. If I pay with bitcoin it is a capital gains event to convert it to USD and I would owe capital gains taxes on the $1k per month or whatever my payment is.

It's the same as if I were to convert the bitcoin to dollars on my own and pay via dollars. Taxes are still paid in this scenario just as they would be if I converted the bitcoin to dollars and did whatever else with it...

Why so angry about this?

Sure you can. With enough networth in an account you can do margin LOC in the 1.9-2.5% range.

The whole train of thought is weird though. There are plenty of people who pay all of their taxes on everything, but still deal in largely cash.

Because "technology."

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