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 ...
My common sense tells me that the same folks trying to tell me that bitcoin is bad and evil are the same ones trying to tell me I shouldn’t have a gun , use gas, breathe, or fart ,, I wonder why some folks still think its a bad idea to look into it?
Probably the same way...crypto currency.
Really they can’t do much of anything about crypto. All the examples you have are of people who used crypto to defraud people. There are elements of fraud that leave traces even when crypto is used. Crypto itself, without fraud, is aether (and yes I’m using the spelling on purpose). Think torrent, think porn, think cryptography. Once things find the internet and truly USE the internet they become very difficult for the government to do anything about. Sure there’s always going to be a few cases where the government gets lucky. But they’re the minority. And there’s enough crypto currencies already in existence that the cockroach element is in full swing. They’ll never get them all. They’ll never even get the majority.
Get ready…BlackRock and Fidelity will have ETFs approved next week. More fools than ever can get fleeced. Or, people will make money.
I just heard some finance guy on Fox Biz say that 1-2% in a bitcoin ETF would be prudent. A year ago that statement would never have been made.
People want out of the Central Bank system. Crypto and gold will reflect that.
The government treats crypto as an asset, not a currency. If you buy something with it, it is considered a sale. And it’s a taxable event.
And trust me…the IRS knows how to track this stuff.
You are talking apples and oranges. You equate FTX, exchange, with Bitcoin. That’s like equating ETrade with the dollar.
What Bankman got nailed on was pure theft. That is good.
What about the Billions that JP Morgan was fined for manipulating the commodities market? Why isn’t Jamie Dimon going to prison?
Why accept a crypto currency based only on computerized ledger entries in preference to one that can be converted at any time into gold or any of several major currencies? Sailing ships were a great form of transportation -- until competition from steam and diesel propulsion came along and made sailing ships an anachronism.
The SEC can refuse to approve the creation of Crypto ETFs.
Nobody cares about that. “Backing” currency is layering illusions on top of each other. The only thing that any currency is really backed by is people’s willingness to take it in exchange for goods and services. Dollars only have the value we give them. Gold only has the value we give it. Crypto also ONLY has the value people give it.
Funny you mention anachronism while touting gold backed currency.
Nobody doing crypto cares about the SEC. Most of the ETFs already don’t use it. All that happens if the SEC refuses to approve them is they lose visibility and taxability. Not something that will bother anybody in the crypto world.
“I just heard some finance guy on Fox Biz say that 1-2% in a bitcoin ETF would be prudent.”
Fox Biz is one way I figure out what not to do.
That said—1 to 2% in tulip bulbs is fine—it will not affect your life very much.
The tulip craze lasted a few months.
Bitcoin has been around for more than a decade.
You keep referring to the “Tulip Craze” but it has almost zero in common with that.
I get that you don’t like Cryptos. And for most of the little ones, I don’t disagree. But the major banks in this country have been using digital tokens and blockchain internally for about five years now.
My point wasn’t to get all of your advice from FBN. My point is that people in the business are talking about it as a legitimate investment device. THAT was unheard of just a year ago.
Adoption will be slow…until it isn’t.
How dare you slander tulip bulbs.
;-)
Great article here:
https://www.history.com/news/tulip-mania-financial-crash-holland
One of my many issues with bitcoin is that millions of naive folks around the world have lost and are losing their life savings on it.
The bitcoin advocates say that is just “bad bitcoin” but the problem is that the average person is totally unable to distinguish “good bitcoin” from “bad bitcoin”.
In the case of Sam the Scam he had a gigantic advertising, public relations and political bribery effort—and poisoned the well.
Good luck getting the good water back.
I have to laugh about the people getting scammed. There are more idiots getting scammed through email every day than there are bitcoin scammers.
But, your mind is closed and unable to see anything but what you have been doing for 50 years.
The inability to see what is possible pretty much means you are relegated to dealing with the crap system we have today.
Buy some gold. LOL.
Nothing would please me more than to have some form of alternate currency.
Imho bitcoin is just not ready for prime time—and a lot of folks are going to have to figure that out the hard way.
That is why I call it the libertarian dream that turned into a criminal nightmare.
Stablecoins bridge the worlds of cryptocurrency and everyday fiat currency because their prices are pegged to a reserve asset like the U.S. dollar or gold. This dramatically reduces volatility compared to something like Bitcoin and results in a form of digital money that is better suited to everything from day-to-day commerce to making transfers between exchanges.
The combination of traditional-asset stability with digital-asset flexibility has proven to be a wildly popular idea. Billions of dollars in value have flowed into stablecoins like USD Coin (USDC) as they've become some of the most popular ways to store and trade value in the crypto ecosystem.
‘Legacy banking financial controls’ are how the Canadian government seized the assets of protestors.
Among Bitcoin’s advantages is not having this ‘legacy’.
Deficits are projected to be a minimum of 1 trillion dollars a year for the next decade.
The inability of the government to print Bitcoin and hand them out are why U.S. dollars will continue to decline in value relative to Bitcoin.
That’s one of the many cryptos out there. And of course you think it’s wrong. You anachronistically believe in gold backed currency.
But the truth is gold has no innate value, unless you’re into making circuit boards. Money has ALWAYS gotten its value from people willing to exchange it. Here’s one of my favorite articles ever:
https://coins.nd.edu/colcoin/colcoinintros/CtfBrit.intro.html
Short version is that at one point in England people knowingly and willing accepted counterfeit money. Not at face value, but they took it. In fact the counterfeit money got so popular there came to counterfeits of the counterfeit. Which they also took, though at lower value than the blackies. Once you take the time to truly understand that time period in history you will understand how money works. And it ain’t got nothing to do with gold backing.
Face it, probably 90% of the money you spend now isn’t even backed by DOLLARS, forget gold. We move around 1s and 0s and say they’re dollars. They aren’t. They’re 1s and 0s. In your direct deposits, in your automatic bill pay. In your debit card. It’s all aether. Not backed by anything... except belief. Just like all money before it.
A crypto backed by and convertible into dollars or gold though would be both a virtual legal tender and a potential inflation hedge due to its convertibility into gold. Indeed, if dollars on deposit behind a crypto were set to earning interest, it would be especially attractive.
Really, you think counterfeits can be the basis for a sound system of money and as good as officially issued money? And you see crypto as the equivalent of counterfeits? My compliments. Rarely have I encountered such honesty in advocacy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.