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Comment by matt_wulfeck | Hacker News Reader

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matt_wulfeck

Government can still extract money from your bitcoin wallet. It works like this:

1. Ask if you have bitcoin and how much. If you lie you go to jail for perjury.

2. Ask you for N bitcoin. If you resist you go to jail.

The entire technical advantage relies on you effectively lying to your government. Not a good plan.

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In the US, it's not usually the government that is the problem. It is the banks (or PayPal).

Ever had your PayPal account frozen for an unknown or arbitrary reason? It happens and it is scary and frustrating.

PayPal only does that because if it didn't it would end up being regulated like every other bank. In Europe this is already the case.

When you give a bank your money you become an unsecured creditor to the bank.

It really isnt your money at that point. Talk to the folks in Cyprus who had 10% taken off the top

> When you give a bank your money you become an unsecured creditor to the bank.

In quite a few places there are central bank guarantees against bank failures. Usually with some kind of cap, 100K or thereabouts.

As a follow up here check the solvency of the FDIC... .250k per account and the highest number of accounts it insured that it can cover was 1.5% according to what I can find

The other 98.5% are out of luck... great guarantee

It would be easier just to collect bitcoin through a goods and services or value added tax at the counter. It's what is going to be required anyway. It will be the only way to effectively collect taxes when you remove banks.

Not to mention, 0. Ask businesses (who don't have an incentive to lie on your behalf) how many Bitcoins they gave you. If you tell them fewer Bitcoins than the businesses reported giving you, you go to jail.

I mean, that's basically how the IRS works now for cash dollars.

Still beats a 3rd party that yields immediately to lawful orders.

"1. Ask if you have bitcoin and how much."

Why would I have to answer that question?

except hiding 256 bits is easier than hiding pallets of $100 bills, or tons of gold bars.

>The entire technical advantage relies on you effectively lying to your government

isn't that a prerequisite of any method?

But how will they find out I lie?

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