Posted on 12/25/2023 7:34:17 AM PST by Theoria
A legal dispute in a tiny Texas town unexpectedly reveals how Chinese nationals can move money to the U.S. without drawing the attention of authorities in either country.
Jerry Yu has the trappings of what the Chinese call second-generation rich. He boasts a Connecticut prep-school education. He lives in a Manhattan condominium bought for $8 million from Jeffrey R. Immelt, the former General Electric chief executive. And he is the majority owner of a Bitcoin mine in Texas, acquired last year for more than $6 million.
Mr. Yu, a 23-year-old student at New York University, has also become — quite unintentionally — a case study in how Chinese nationals can move money from China to the United States without drawing the attention of authorities in either country.
The Texas facility, a large computing center, was not purchased with dollars. Instead, it was bought with cryptocurrency, which offers anonymity, with the transaction routed through an offshore exchange, preventing anyone from knowing the origin of the financing.
Such secrecy allows Chinese investors to avoid the U.S. banking system, and the accompanying oversight of federal regulators, as well as sidestep Chinese restrictions on money leaving China. In a more traditional transaction, a bank receiving the funds would know where they were coming from and would be required by law to report any suspicious activity to the U.S. Treasury.
None of this would be known had Mr. Yu’s company — BitRush Inc., also known as BytesRush — not run into troubles in the tiny Texas Panhandle town of Channing, population 281, where contractors say they weren’t fully paid for their work on his mine there.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
so-called crypto “mining” should either be outlawed or taxed into non-existence in the U.S. ... crypto transactions and “exchanges” should be subject to the exact same laws as all USD transactions ...
I know it seems strange, but there was a time, long ago, when whatever money one might have was one’s own business and no business whatsoever of the government.
You will get burned if you play in that schoolyard.
If you are ahead at this point declare victory...
and run.
“It’s a decentralized concept with no ability to be overseen by anyone. Congress could pass a law but it would have no meaning because there is no one anywhere that could possibly enforce such a law.”
ROTFLOL!
like how the U.S. was unable to shut down FTX, unable to put Sam Bankman-Fried in prison, unable to fine Binance five billion dollars, unable to force CZ to resign from Binance, and unable to force CZ to remain in the U.S. until he’s sentenced?
impossible for the U.S. government to take actions like that?
The crypto scammers had a plan—get wealthy enough to bribe politicians into creating a regulatory environment they could control—so they could rip off stupid people at will.
Sam the Scam failed—but there are a lot more where he came from...
No it can’t. Because there’s no one in charge. Just look at torrent download. Those are illegal (well mostly, depending on what the copyright holder says) and no government anywhere has been able to do anything about it. Because they’re basically undetectable. The whole decentralized unblockable nature of the internet makes it so. It’s trying to hold water in your hand to stop these things. It’s just not possible.
And nobody that matter will us a government created crypto. Since a big part of the lure of crypto is the government doesn’t know anything. If these people wanted the government to know about their money they’d just do regular banking.
An enormously larger amount of energy is spent keeping the lights on at the legacy banking institutions, and compared to banking peers the mining community is actually more likely to use high efficiency renewables like geothermal to power their enterprises.
It is important to remember it isn’t a ‘waste’ to maintain a currency that the government cannot abrogate by force, or print at their whim and thereby devalue.
US dollars will continue to decline in value relative to Bitcoin because the U.S. monetary authorities will never stop inflating the currency to buy votes with dollars they refuse to tax.
“I know it seems strange, but there was a time, long ago, when whatever money one might have was one’s own business and no business whatsoever of the government.”
ROTFLOL!
that has never been the case in the history of mankind as soon as money was invented a few thousand years ago ... because of a little thing called mandatory taxes ...
If you talk to crypto believers they will tell you that those were bad crypto actors who got caught but they are giving their money to “good crypto actors”.
“Good crypto actors” are like “good child molesters”.
It is fraud inside fraud inside fraud all the way down...
You do realize that’s just a handful of people who did very illegal things with their crypto and did them stupidly. Meanwhile each one of them represents MILLIONS of others using crypto, sometimes to do illegal stuff, but they’re keeping their profile low, and no government even knows they exist.
Don’t let a couple minor busts, that mostly happen at the border line of turning crypto into dollars, fool you. The government can’t do shit.
the states that figure out how to run on consumption taxes/sales taxes will be way out in front
The very basis of communist/socialist government is an IRS.
“An enormously larger amount of energy is spent keeping the lights on at the legacy banking institutions”
that may be, but legacy banking is the financial grease that makes the world economy go round, whereas crypto has repeatedly proven that it’s only real use case is as a gambling mechanism, a mechanism for defrauding punters out of their real money, and as a mechanism for terrorists and criminals to evade legacy banking financial controls ...
“minor busts” = the world’s two largest crypto exchanges ...
I would encourage you to read this book about crypto.
https://www.amazon.com/Number-Go-Up-Cryptos-Staggering/dp/0593443810
It has a lot of details not known to the general public.
Most crypto usage is in the third world—and most people using it are getting ripped off....
You do not want to be one of them.
But just a couple of people. Basically what you’re saying is that because they killed Pablo Escobar clearly the government can stop illegal drugs. Meanwhile we both know that’s not true. And crypto is even harder because there’s nothing physical. Just 1s and 0s flying around the world. Just look at the US government’s failed attempts in the 90s to outlaw private encryption.
I know people in the crypto world. I know more than that book. Also I’m not getting into crypto. I’m simply pointing out that anybody thinking the government can do anything about it is being dumb. It can’t.
Scams will always be with us.
The more interesting question is whether you will be one of the victims.
“I know more than that book.”
I highly doubt that.
The author interviewed cab drivers in the Phillipines, crypto store operators in Cambodia and just regular citizens who were ripped off by crypto and lost their life savings—all over the world.
(He also interviewed some of the scammers—quite a colorful group of brigands.)
Get rich or die trying.
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