Reasonably safe Crypto funds when traveling.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

On the contrary: scarcity does create value. Always did and always will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_value

You missed the point. For scarcity to create value, the underlying commodity must have value. Scarcity can only modify...but not create...the value.

If there is one loaf of bread and a dozen hungry people, scarcity creates a lot of value in that bread.

If there is one pair of rubber gloves and a dozen hungry people, scarcity doesn't create value in the gloves.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

You missed the point. For scarcity to create value, the underlying commodity must have value. Scarcity can only modify...but not create...the value.

If there is one loaf of bread and a dozen hungry people, scarcity creates a lot of value in that bread.

If there is one pair of rubber gloves and a dozen hungry people, scarcity doesn't create value in the gloves.

Rubber gloves would have value in that you wouldn't leave prints when you steal the other bloke's chicken.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Rubber gloves would have value in that you wouldn't leave prints when you steal the other bloke's chicken.

So if there are no greasy fingerprints and they guy with the rubber gloves has grease smears all over his face, the guy with the rubber gloves must be guilty. Of course, there was no chicken in room in either scenario.

Of course, scarcity isn't creating the value out of nothing, the value is in a tool that's useful in committing a crime. The scarcity is only modifying the value.

[Franziska]

Wow. What a discussion I sparked here.
Quite amusing to read how fierce you guys fight for your standpoint.

As mentioned in my first post.
We use the solidcoin USDC in few situations.

To park our Crypto investment when for a moment the usually high market fluctuations tend to become very high and we want to see how the general direction is developing.
With the intentions to reinvest as soon as this has become a bit clearer again.

Selling it back to a hard currency to park it costs a high margin and makes the fund lie in an account with the Estonian bank Conibase is working with in case of European customers.
Parking it in a solidcoin costs only a few bucks.
Besides not being parked at an exchange reduces also significantly the risk of losing it in case someone hacks the exchange.
Would be surprised if some pretty good hackers in Russia do not see Crypto Exchanges as a high value target.
If your coins are offline and on your wallet that risk is almost zero.

Secondly we can store these coins on an offline wallet which means we can retrade them in any working crypto exchange.
If Estonia, heaven forbid, would get invaded the coins would be accessible to us.
Of course it's gone if you loose the wallet and the secret code phrase.
Still, if you drop your your Krugerrand into the ocean or similar its gone too. The likelyhood to have actual gold stolen is also much higher.
A hardware wallet can be stored in many locations. It does not necessarily need to be on your own boat or on the boat at all.

I agree that fiat currencies loose overall buying power over medium to long term periods.
Usually in the short term that is not excessively the case, unless there are special circumstances like sanctions imposed or a scent of war in the air. In my view the latter is one of the reasons why the € has currently lost value respectively to the US dollar.
Due to this, the stablecoin linked to US dollar is a viable short term solution for me.
The choice for USDC over Tether was done because Tethers organization is based in Hongkong while in the case of USDC this is not the case. The USDC coin is also better surveyed by state side legislators.

Regarding transferring funds over borders, I do not suspect real issues as the sums are not huge in our case and I have proof as to where the originate from.
I would think that if you declare them and you have the appropriate documentation it should be no problem with customs.

We do diversify in any case. Some in our bank account some in the stable coin some in other ways.

All of this was just to mitigate the risks to some degree that are around if things spin out of control in Ukraine to some extent.
I doubt that we would immediately have the terminal nuclear war whiping out all of the northern hemisphere. Much higher risk though for a conventional war in western Europe, especially the Baltics, possibly even including the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
I am not planning this for the terminal war, as this seems to far fetched for me at the moment, even Putin is not suicidal and Biden is far to thoughtful to initiate this.

SIDECOMMENT:This shows in how careful he reacted when there were discussions over the polish Migs. Europe is Ukraines lifeline and safe haven at the moment. If Europe gets drawn into active participation in this war that is gone and Europe is ablaze as well. Noone can want that.
I feel deeply for the Ukrainians terrible plight, but I think it would be worse if the EU&NATO would get actively engaged in this war. Much better to support them in any other way below the threshold of activly going into battle. SIDECOMMENT OFF.

So, in this somewhat limited scenario I consider the infrastructure and www in other continents still largely intact.
Still, we would suddenly be people looking for a new home base.
A boat gives you at least the flexibility of where to go and a home as starting point.
Having part of our funds in non European assets helps mitigating the risks.

Maybe some understand now better why I started this thread. It was not the idea to discuss if Crypto is good or bad. We made our decision on that, you may make yours.
It was more the intention to give those who do use Crypto awareness of the fact that Fiat with Coinbase IN EUROPE MAY be at an increased risk as they are working with an Estonian bank.
Further to give one way to reduce that risk temporarily, if you intend to reinvest that money again into Crypto in the short term.

[PaulCrawhorn]

Stablecoin are centralized not like BTC

and run by very shaky if not shady outfits.

[Franziska]

Originally Posted by PaulCrawhorn

Stablecoin are centralized not like BTC

and run by very shaky if not shady outfits.

Care to back that claim up, especially when it comes to USDC?

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Franziska

Care to back that claim up, especially when it comes to USDC?

I have read in financial publications that the stablecoins are not backed up by anything as they claim.

Most claim to hold the equal amount of your investment in the thing they claim to be tied to. Physical gold if you buy a gold stablecoin, US dollars if you buy a USD stablecoin.

Investigators have found that there are virtually no assets at all or a tiny amount of the assets held, despite the stablecoins claiming otherwise. I especially remember seeing this with gold stablecoins and USD stablecoins.

It’s exactly as RedneckRob said.

[Franziska]

Originally Posted by Chotu

I have read in financial publications that the stablecoins are not backed up by anything as they claim.



Most claim to hold the equal amount of your investment in the thing they claim to be tied to. Physical gold if you buy a gold stablecoin, US dollars if you buy a USD stablecoin.



Investigators have found that there are virtually no assets at all or a tiny amount of the assets held, despite the stablecoins claiming otherwise. I especially remember seeing this with gold stablecoins and USD stablecoins.



It’s exactly as RedneckRob said.

Thanks.
Still, it would be very interesting to see the source for that.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Franziska

Thanks.
Still, it would be very interesting to see the source for that.

Well, I read the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and I think Yahoo financial news.

That’s about it.

It’s not some political thing. It’s just finance.

There are many cases of stable coins that do not have the assets on hand that they claim to have. So just do your sue diligence. that’s all I’m saying.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Unless you are purposely practicing tax evasion, a $20k transaction will show up and yes, they can find you.

If you are traveling and take a few hundred in cash, you don't have to report it anyway.

If you want to jump thru some hoops and hope not to get stung buying a pack of gum with bitcoin, go for it. You'll probably get away with it, simply because it's not worth their trouble.

If you start transferring tens of thousands across borders without reporting it, good luck with that.

I guess you don’t get it. Let’s say you have $100k in the bank in the US. Now you fly to the Bahamas with $500 in your wallet… does that make you a criminal? Now you buy a nice little vacation home in the Bahamas which costs $100k and instead of using cash, you wire it straight from your account to the notary escrow account in the Bahamas. Sure you are now a criminal because you transferred money Internationally?!

(No, you are not. As a free man, you are allowed to buy whatever you want wherever you want. You only have to report cash and other valuables that you carry on your person while traveling)

[Chotu]

This is accurate

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

I guess you don’t get it. Let’s say you have $100k in the bank in the US. Now you fly to the Bahamas with $500 in your wallet… does that make you a criminal? Now you buy a nice little vacation home in the Bahamas which costs $100k and instead of using cash, you wire it straight from your account to the notary escrow account in the Bahamas. Sure you are now a criminal because you transferred money Internationally?!

(No, you are not. As a free man, you are allowed to buy whatever you want wherever you want. You only have to report cash and other valuables that you carry on your person while traveling)

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

I guess you don’t get it. Let’s say you have $100k in the bank in the US. Now you fly to the Bahamas with $500 in your wallet… does that make you a criminal? Now you buy a nice little vacation home in the Bahamas which costs $100k and instead of using cash, you wire it straight from your account to the notary escrow account in the Bahamas. Sure you are now a criminal because you transferred money Internationally?!



(No, you are not. As a free man, you are allowed to buy whatever you want wherever you want. You only have to report cash and other valuables that you carry on your person while traveling)

Actually there are stacks of countries with extensive money laundering legislation, where transactions over certain limits have to reported on etc or specific procedures must be followed

It’s not simply as saying you’re a “ free man “ , what ever that statement actually means.

And yes if you don’t comply with those requirements you are a criminal

This also includes holding undeclared income abroad etc.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

I guess you don’t get it. Let’s say you have $100k in the bank in the US. Now you fly to the Bahamas with $500 in your wallet… does that make you a criminal? Now you buy a nice little vacation home in the Bahamas which costs $100k and instead of using cash, you wire it straight from your account to the notary escrow account in the Bahamas. Sure you are now a criminal because you transferred money Internationally?!

(No, you are not. As a free man, you are allowed to buy whatever you want wherever you want. You only have to report cash and other valuables that you carry on your person while traveling)

If you run it thru the banking system, it's fully reported and legal.

If you take a suitcase full of $100 bills but report it at customs & immigration (both leaving and entering), it's fully reported and legal (though you may be asked to do some explaining as to why you are doing it in cash).

If you sneak it across the border, it's illegal. Sneaking it may be hiding plastic wrapped bundles of $100 bills in the bilge or it could be using crypto to try and pass it across the border without the authorities finding out.

$500 does not carry a requirement to report it, so not relevant to the discussion. (though technically, if you are doing it as part of tax fraud it would be illegal...just unlikely for most to bother committing tax fraud over such small amounts).

They have this all sorted, you aren't tricking anyone.

[Chotu]

I think what a lot of people are missing here is that a crypto wallet is equivalent to a bank account.

The transactions are reported when you convert it back to Cash. Everything is accounted for. You are not taking anything across any border when you move across the border and have a crypto wallet.

If you did, you could never go anywhere.

Say you have a coin base Coinbase in Estonia as mentioned earlier in the thread. Traveling To the United States from Germany doesn’t move your money anywhere. That’s ridiculous.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

This is not true. I bought some Bitcoin with Euros a while back and since then the value of the Euro has gone down (everything is more expensive) while the Bitcoin value went up. This is not accidental because fiat currency is devalued by design (they print more to reduce value which lowers their debt) while Bitcoin is a limited resource that, like gold, can’t be made more of. The volatility you see is because of speculation but don’t confuse volatility with value!

Let's at least commit to being intellectually honest here Jedi. You fully realize that BTC has gone down more than 40% at times in just the last 6 months. You fully realize that if you made money on a BTC purchase with respect to the Euro, it was purely luck based on when you purchased the BTC and you could just as easily been down 40% at one point if you'd purchased at a different time. You know that someone could say the same about buying options on GameStop, which says nothing about GameStop's suitability as a currency! I know you understand that your increased BTC value in this case had absolutely nothing to do with the low single digit annual inflation rate of the Euro as you're stating here. Come on Jedi, you know better and you're better than this. Going back to the OP's question, anything that fluctuates randomly by 40% over the course of a few months is completely unsuitable for the purpose the OP originally purported to be seeking, you know this as well.

I would also point out that if your overlying assumption is correct, that BTC will do the opposite of normal currency and continuously increase in value, it would create havoc if it became widely used in commerce. If you're a consumer it's easy to only see the world from a consumer's perspective, but as a business owner I see both sides of it. Say, for example, I use aluminum to make boat hulls. Today I buy 20 tons of aluminum for 1 BTC, and after I run that aluminum through my machines to turn it into hulls I can sell them for 10% more than I paid for the aluminum which covers my cost of production. So my factory does it's job and produces the frames and I go to sell them, only to find that BTC has appreciated by 10%. From your limited perspective, Yay! From my perspective, I can now sell my finished product for 1 BTC, making 0 gross and a significant net loss when you consider all my costs. This fundamental problem can be somewhat mitigated by big companies by forwards and hedging, but for commerce in general it's deadly for any business that has to buy raw material and sell a finished product later. Not to mention anyone trying to lend money. And speaking of loans, if BTC is supposedly long-term trending up in value, why are people getting eye popping interest rates for lending their BTC?

Not for nothing the last time we saw prolonged appreciation of currency over time we called it the Great Depression.