The naivitee, ignorance, and arrogance of this thread astounds me.
The HN population (I include myself in this) seems to think everything is new, there are no precedents for any of this, and that we're building some kind of new society here. We aren't. Times like this make me wish people like us were less dismissive of history, liberal arts, and people-not-in-tech generally.
Case 1: a commenter below said something about "a guy moved his assets into BTC to hide from bankruptcy". Bankruptcy courts deal with this stuff ALL DAY. It's their job. You can't just make huge transfers/sales when in bankruptcy and expect people to think that's normal behavior. This has gone on long before bitcoin, and will continue long after it's gone.
Case 2: taxes. BTC is an asset. If you buy at price X and sell at price Y, guess what, you owe taxes on Y-X. I don't understand how this is news to anyone.
Case 3: money laundering and other types of financial crimes. There are entire companies who build software to detect money laundering. It's a well-understood problem.
All I'm trying to say is, just because you have a CS degree and work in San Francisco, don't think you're the smartest person in the world. Moving money is one of the oldest human endeavors and unlike a lot of topics in software development, it's an old profession with a huge body of accumulated domain knowledge. We shouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.
The HN population (I include myself in this) seems to think everything is new, there are no precedents for any of this, and that we're building some kind of new society here. We aren't. Times like this make me wish people like us were less dismissive of history, liberal arts, and people-not-in-tech generally.
Case 1: a commenter below said something about "a guy moved his assets into BTC to hide from bankruptcy". Bankruptcy courts deal with this stuff ALL DAY. It's their job. You can't just make huge transfers/sales when in bankruptcy and expect people to think that's normal behavior. This has gone on long before bitcoin, and will continue long after it's gone.
Case 2: taxes. BTC is an asset. If you buy at price X and sell at price Y, guess what, you owe taxes on Y-X. I don't understand how this is news to anyone.
Case 3: money laundering and other types of financial crimes. There are entire companies who build software to detect money laundering. It's a well-understood problem.
All I'm trying to say is, just because you have a CS degree and work in San Francisco, don't think you're the smartest person in the world. Moving money is one of the oldest human endeavors and unlike a lot of topics in software development, it's an old profession with a huge body of accumulated domain knowledge. We shouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.