Maybe the author’s post should have been “why a tiny fraction of cryptocurrency whales can’t cash out without a little research and upfront vetting” but I suspect that would have made for a terrible title. So he wrote a great title instead. It just doesn’t have the benefit of being true.
Hmm? I'm not sure how a tax attorney would mollify any AML concerns on the exchanges. Customers have zero AML concerns, they just want their money.
I totally agree a tax attorney is a thing you need at that level. Disagree they will be helpful in any meaningful way in getting your money out of an exchange account - they are irrelevant to that process.
A good tax attorney with crypto experience should be able to direct you to a vetted and legit OTC trade desk/counterparty though. That lets you avoid the exchanges entirely.
Exchanges and banks need to verify you aren’t laundering money. You want them to verify this quickly. A competent lawyer can help you prepare the necessary paperwork and, in a pinch, explain things to a bank’s or exchange’s compliance officer over the phone. That increases your credibility and in turn odds of getting approved quickly.
I think this shows a bit of naivety on your part, unfortunately. No compliance officer at any public exchange is picking up the phone over a $100k customer. I'd be surprised if anyone - including 8 figure clients - can get such a person on the phone right now. I personally know of cases where 7 figures are locked up with zero way to contact a human. Typically it's so far working out in most cases I know of, but having that much tied up for 60+ days with almost no communication (attorney or not) can be a bit nerve wracking for most.
I do agree re: your point on documentation, that certainly can be helpful.
At the exchanges you may have trouble. Many of them lack proper compliance departments. There are, however, response requirements under U.S. law your attorney will be knowledgeable about.
At a bank, contacting compliance is trivial if you know how to use the relevant public databases. There are also questions about structuring, e.g. transferring the coins to a multi-member LLC and then cashing out into it, that could be relevant for one’s jurisdiction.
All that said, having documents in order is a huge plus. Incomplete AML and KYC documents tend to go to the bottom of the priority pile and top of the risk pile.
You're absolutely correct - when dealing with actual financial institutions just have a Real Lawyer(tm) do that for you or you're very likely to have a bad time.
If you say - mined your coins back in 2011 - and never did any accounting of that income at that time, if you want to be able to claim capital gains vs. regular income you are going to find a pretty clued-in tax attorney to do such a thing.
Even worse if you were an early adopter and started spending coins/trading with folks back when it was all magic internet money. Did you account for those 50BTC you sent as a tip to that software dev you enjoyed? It was $100 at the time, so I doubt many people were keeping careful records.
What if you started trading on mtgox or bitstamp or whatnot 5 years ago? Did you account for all those trades as income at the time even if you never cashed out USD to your bank account?
All in all it depends on your situation.