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Comment by bdangubic | Hacker News Reader

I am a dual citizen. I wanted to buy a condo near my parents where I spend my summers with my family. I have never in my entire life felt like a criminal more than trying to buy something, with the money I made with my wife, going through regular financial system. after weeks of feeling like a criminal over coffee with my cousin who owns the company that was selling me the condo I was like “can I just fucking give you two bitcoins on a thumbdrive…”

I would never own a crypto but working with the current financial system can make you feel like a criminal more than crypto at times… :)

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Foreign property ownership is not like buying an Armani bag when you visit Italy. The financial regulations are complementary to the legal ones. Besides, even if you just sent 2 bitcoins, what about all the remaining documentation? It's not gonna fill out itself

And this is [part of] why Dubai has the highest per capita influx of high net worth individuals.

You can call them a dystopic theocracy, which is a bit true, but you can literally just fly over and buy a condo in a neighborhood with basically zero violent crime, with 2 bitcoins with essentially no questions asked.

Dubai is the Bitcoin of cities, so I guess the example fits.

Fine, let's just give up civilization and praise the disneyland for oligarch and rich brats, build and maintained by slave like labor.

What made you feel like a criminal? Buying a home is fairly straightforward and has almost no state verification of any piece of it, at least in the US.

Was it something the state enforced, or something being done by the agents of the transaction (ie the mortgage company)?

That is because you’re working in the same financial system.

Now try buying some property in South America. Or Eastern Europe. Or Asia.

Be prepared for a similar experience OP documents.

It's incredibly common in Argentina to buy a property with a suitcase of cash. In fact I think it's about the only way it's done. Argentina has a tax on bank transfers, plus by various measures the tax on profit of business can be above 100% so no one actually uses the traditional finance system for more than a minority fraction of their use.

Just owning this much money feels criminal. Suddenly a lot of institutions start asking questions about where they came from.

> Buying a home is fairly straightforward and has almost no state verification of any piece of it, at least in the US.

you mean the purchase deed isn't registered anyplace?

or you mean that the mortgage company didn't do a credit/background check on the buyer before granting the mortgage? Which includes some level of providing a state-backed identity card?

Or do you mean it's easy to buy a house for cash without hassle in the US? Just a suitcase of $100 bills? I'm assuming you've tried this recently?? (and the house cost more than 150K?

Only one of those things is a state enforced requirement (the deed) and everything else are system requirements that do not get solved with bitcoin. What mortgage company is going to loan you a million dollars ("in btc" whatever) without figuring out if you're a good risk? That's not the currency of choice making you get cross examined, it's the nature of the thing you are trying to do.

Maybe the suitcase of anonymous cash bit is easier but only because you're doing that to dodge taxes... In which case feeling like a criminal might be a bit on point.

If your funds are clean there is zero reason for the (unfounded) anxiety. Just follow through the motion.

A local agent on a flat fee will probably make things easier.

> If your funds are clean there is zero reason for the (unfounded) anxiety.

Nonsense. Your funds can be frozen with no recourse even if you're innocent. No-one will tell you what you supposedly did wrong. Everyone who hears about your predicament will make up reasons to believe that you'd done something wrong because they want to believe that the system doesn't make mistakes.

Most token holders use exchanges, where freezing accounts and just keeping the tokens is a daily occurrence.

That's not something solved by cryptocurrency in its current form.

You do realize that they get frozen only because of the fiat system regulations/laws?

These exchanges freeze accounts in fear of what governments might do to them if they weren't cautious/suspicious enough. They have no economical interest in freezing account otherwise, that's one less customer trading and paying them fees.

> You do realize that they get frozen only because of the fiat system regulations/laws?

Well, sometimes. Sometimes they get frozen because the exchange operator decides to take the money and run.

I bought a vehicle early this year. In the UK we have supposedly instant BACs transfers.

However because opaque anti-fraud stuff, that I am not informed about, I was stuck in the middle of a field trying to convince someone in a call centre that the car I could see with my own eyes (and I had done all the appropriate checks) does indeed exist. This whole process took almost an hour because their anti-fraud team has a two hour response time.

There are obstacles in the banking system that make doing legal transactions difficult.

> after weeks of feeling like a criminal over coffee with my cousin who owns the company that was selling me the condo I was like “can I just fucking give you two bitcoins on a thumbdrive…”

and he said no, because you also can't do this. Bitcoin has not solved any problem there.

Actually, in many places it would work fine. Some it would be immediate jail time.

In the places it would work fine, so would a traditional transfer, though. Again, Bitcoin hasn't solved any issue here.

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