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Comment by bachback | Hacker News Reader

Can this be real? a guy calls the cops, but admits he was involved?

"Tacitly acknowledging his role in the Bitcoin project, he looks down, staring at the pavement and categorically refuses to answer questions."

"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."

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It sounds like he's 'on the spectrum' - very strong commitment to the literal truth goes with the territory. As does desire for privacy, tendency to work alone obsessively on unusual projects, lack of interest in money (or in being rich, rather)...

That's an interesting observation and now that you pointed it out, I think I agree with you. However, I think that more than autistic people lack interest in "being rich". If I had $400m, I'd buy a house and pay off our car. The remaining $399.5m would be invested. I'd take out $40-50k per year for spending. Extravagant lifestyles are overrated, I think.

Speaking as a sometimes paranoid libertarian with a reasonable amount of Bitcoin, myself, I can say the two things preventing me from cashing out of any portion of it is the likelihood I would be identified and the fact that any sales of it I have to pay taxes on. I purchased a house this year that I could have afforded several times over in Bitcoin, but instead took out a loan just like anyone else.

I don't understand this. the amount you'd pay in capital gains is probably less than what you're going to pay out in interest, notwithstanding the mortgage interest deduction to your taxes (in which the government subsidizes you at the expense of other taxpayers).

I mean, perhaps you ran the numbers and it works out better financially, but I get the impression from your post that you don't want to pay any taxes on it on principle, which seems economically irrational.

My accountant did not think it qualified as capital gains. I guess the IRS has a specific designation for what can be considered for that.

> [...] the two things preventing me from cashing out of any portion of it is the likelihood I would be identified and the fact that any sales of it I have to pay taxes on.

Do you think this will change?

If not, then your unspent bitcoins are worth exactly $0 (ie. if you don't spend them they might as well be worth nothing). Or are you waiting for something?

Granted, I don't know who you are, and how important it is for you not to be identified (by whom?).

It had better be real, because the entire story hangs around the unprovable observation of that vague admission. Otherwise this is a story about harassing a shut-in and his family.

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