Still, (I think) Bitcoin was not meant as a way to evade tax or capital controls but to be your own bank by having direct control of your money.
BTC might initially have had those former uses, but is steadily moving away from its experimental past, and that is a very big positive.
Regulations treating BTC as a mainstream asset, including AML and institutional KYC, are already essential at the fiat interface, but the treatment of transfers in crypto alone are a different question.
On one level, regulations about crypto transfers are defacto recognising it offically as money. That may not be a route that monetary authorities want to go down at present.
In most juristictions, all valuable assets are required to be registered in some way,and that usually is a positve in terms of ownership law and security. If BTC is outside that system it will always have a deficiency in terms of adoption and mainstream recognition.
I would envisage BTC and some other cryptos eventually coming within all of that, with most others remaining in the grey zone ,with the concomitant freedoms and also drawbacks of that status.
Surely the primary facet of cryptos (and the one for which BTC was born) is to provide a parallel monetary store and exchange system, as a refuge from the eventual insolvency of the current fiat regime ?
Over the long term, the free market should decide whether that is a worthy, recognised or necessary function.
The ability to evade tax and capital controls is just a consequence of being the sole owner of your money. I do agree that further incorporation of crypto into society and law is a good thing as long as no laws are made that attempt to disrupt the operation of the network or that interferes with obvious technical best practices.
I like your reasoning of providing a parallel monetary store and exchange system as the present system will surely implode at some point. Hopefully BTC and Lightning will be ready by then to support a switch.
To future generations this battle of fiat against crypto will appear the same as things like the french revolution, the rise of socialism and more egalitarian rights, the seperation of church and state, rise of the internet. All important steps in human development. A global and neutral form of hard money is just like that, once adopted we won't turn back.
All true. Yet the thing is that most countries have been during the past decade increasing regulations to basically leave "out of the system" any "unregistered" assets. Gone are the days where you could go with a briefcase full of cash and buy a house no questions asked. Now, whatever you use to buy it be it fiat, gold, others assets, crypto it has to pass AML/KYC controls and, in most cases, it even has to undergo a previous conversion to "BANKING" fiat (ie. no CASH fiat).
And the banking regulations are being hardened every day. Again, gone are the days where you could just deposit a briefcase full of cash into your bank account. Now every deposit over 3000€ needs to be fully explained. And if you think you can split it into multiple smaller deposits that's even worse as it could be considered structuring once/if detected.
So, yes, we can have our Bitcoin stash "undeclared" but when it comes to use/spend it to buy real state or almost anything of high value it basically have to pay whatever taxes are due. Same goes for capital controls... it is the high value purchase (ie: a house) in the other country what would be noticed not the transfer of the Bitcoins.
They don't really need new specific regulations to enforce taxes or capital control. The same applies to gold or whatever form of money. Bitcoin is no different here.
Bitcoin may lack the physical form of cash and gold which makes it virtually accesible to his owner anywhere in the world but when you spend it (other than trivial amounts, etc) it is when existing regulations come into place and become enforceable. There's no way to avoid that except, of course, for small daily spendings.
And it would be beneficial if the MSM stopped highlighting marginal scenarios in which crypto can be used for money laundering or evading tax/capital controls because it is just that: marginal. It's corporates and "smart" accounting what you really need to use for that, not any form of money... neither Bitcoin.
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