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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

I would think DHS is more worried about

   (any) money -> mt gox -> bitcoin -> groups not aligned to DHS interests

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This "threat" already exists with cash though (and with cash you can throw it into an ocean or burn it, but the blockchain will forever record your Bitcoin ID and you have to hope DHS never figures out which ID is yours).

Yes, but DHS can't eliminate cash. However they can restrict the amount you carry across borders without declaring to around $10K. Bitcoin does make it very easy to transfer a million USD worth of coin to anywhere in the world in minutes. It's impossible to do that with cash, unless you go through a heavily regulated and monitored bank.

And there is always the Tor network for anonymity.

You can transfer absurd sums in bitcoin across borders all day, but good luck when it comes time to convert it into a useful currency. Turning btc into a useful currency in the US and Europe is about as easy as its going to get.

>Turning btc into a useful currency in the US and Europe is about as easy as its going to get.

But good luck trying to get the value out that you put in. Dollars and Euros are relatively stable compared to bitcoin. There is a much higher guarantee that you're going to get the same value out that you put in with Dollars or Euros compared to bitcoin. Bitcoin looks like a great investment until you actually try to turn it back into dollars or euros.

Furthering my point. Using Bitcoin to transfer large sums of wealth across borders without being tracked is by all measures almost impossible, unless you're in bed with an exchange and they'd be willing to take that risk.

At some point, if you're trying to move a lot of money, it's cheaper to buy tickets for multiple people and split the amount of cash they can carry to some fraction of the maximum amount allowed out by law and then combine on the receiving end. If you're a powerful enough person (or dangerous enough) you can probably compel them to cooperate either based on compensation or intimidation.

who then need to go -> mt gox -> money in order to get any damn use out of it.

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