Bitcoin Forum

Looks like the SWISS banking system will no longer be a tax haven from respective governments.

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/tax-evasion_swiss-say-goodbye-to-banking-secrecy-/42799134

Those with huge cash stores will need some other new store of value.

Wonder what that could be?  BTC

Bitcoin isn't really anonymous though, it is pseudonymous. It only works as tax haven if the holder is super-discreet and doesn't trip various wires, like selling a lot in one go.

Pseudo anonymous can be converted to fully anonymous with the right tools, VPN+TOR, Tails+Electrum, Converting bitcoin to Monero being the best options to remain discreet.

Bitcoin is really a new store of value. The Swiss account holders can buy the most fancy hardware wallet for such purpose.

Let's hope so, I for one welcome them with open arms, Lord knows we need some big, mainstream investment.

Well looks like they'll have to switch to cryptos if they want to be able to keep their money tax-free. Bitcoin would be the most suited to it and they have the money to buy whatever hardware it would require to protect their possession. I sure would do the same if I win the lottery -- convert a large part of it to crypto for safe-keeping.

As long as you make yourself small and don't leave anything obscenely obvious, it is fairly hard to make a case as to who owns what address. Just never use your real info, always use pseudonyms, all that jazz.

Bitcoin can be a fine tax haven. Just never exchange it all at once and always make sure that you work with people that are trustworthy.

If swiss account could no longer hold secrecy then bigtime whales and investors will likely explore bitcoin. Bitcoin can provide them with the secrecy that they need. If this happens bitcoin may survive the threat of the central banks to go digital. This may cause another giant explosion of price increase since billions of investment will enter into bitcoin.

this can indeed be a new era as the article says but a new era for cryptocurrencies which have no central authority to be handing out these kinds of information. in my opinion this can be a launchinig switch for bitcoin so that lots of investors move their money into bitcoin holding.

However Bitcoin can not be seized like bank accounts. This feature is priceless.

it can, it is counted as an asset if the court wants to and they can order the law enforcement to seize your assets with bitcoin included.
if I am remembering this right, it was BurtW who had a similar experience when they seized all his bitcoin.

not if you then use your coin to purchase something on which you have your shipping address, and if bitcoin will be used on today like a currency(i hope so) then its anonymous will be destroyed completely

I'm getting the feeling that Bitcoin will become a reserve currency more than a trading currency. The new bank and government offerings will become difficult competion in the trading arena. To gain credibility as a reserve currency, it needs to move gambling sites out of the main structure. Perhaps someone could start a sidechain for gambling sites in the same way that Neteller helped fiat transfers.

There are still plenty of tax havens like the Cayman Islands, for example.
Some tech-smart investors will move to new methods like Bitcoin, but most will follow the tried and true methods of hiding their money in offshore accounts.
It will take a while but eventually crypto may become a part of investment portfolios. No one would risk putting their entire wealth in something so unproven though.

I thought that the Swiss banking system is huge because of the "banking secrecy" ,not

becasue of taxation.This should have happen a long time ago.

Anyway most of the people with Swiss bank deposits will move to offshore islands.

I don`t expect that they will start buying bitcoins.

Not using Bitcoin properly is totally possible. But using it properly is the preferred method.

About time this would be happening, the world is now waking up to corruption and even children know that swizz is the biggest tax haven. I do hope they do not use btc as a tax haven. It will get btc a bad name. And the government will then suspect every btc user. It will be dam annoying. Let's hope they stay away from btc for good. Already the government would have eyes on btc and this would empower them to open unnecessary trails again users.

i was thinking a similar thing to what you say about the offshore account and people move to other offshore bank accounts.

but the problem is that Swiss banks were the safest option for anybody who wanted to have such accounts for holding money and others are not so much the same, but bitcoin is offering a lot more safety than any other option apart from its price.

it was only a matter of time when that happened, swiss bank privacy would eventually end, but the swiss are smart and they have been investing a lot in bitcoin infrastructure, just look at the amount of ATM that you can use in Switzerland. So it's clear what they are going to do: they are going to aim to be the most bitcoin friendly country on the planet, that is going to be their future niche. If they cant no longer provide bank privacy, they will provide bitcoin privacy.

This is a bullshit argument.

In fact this policy is what will actually make Switzerland lose it's status as global hub (together with other BS laws that the EU is pushing on them). Rich people will immediately move their money to Singapore, Cayman Islands or Hong Kong.


The swiss are idiots , now most rich people will immediately transfer their money out of there if they havent so already.

They might even look into Bitcoin.

Yeah it doesn't make sense. The rich will go wherever they can get away with paying as minimum taxes as possible, sad to see since the rich should be the ones paying taxes to help the ones that are poor as fuck and go from bill to bill (those people should be the ones paying no taxes in order to leave them a margin to be able to start their own businesses). Anyway Switzerland will either adopt Bitcoin or lose tons of money. It's not like Switzerland produces anything in the world, their only role is hiding rich celebrities and big businessman's money so why are they killing their own niche.

These people will most likely move their money elsewhere as there are other places where they can privately place them. Even if they went the Bitcoin route straight away, I'm not sure these are the people we want entering Bitcoin... They probably won't spend it either until they can switch it back to fiat for huge profit or Bitcoin is widely accepted for buying luxury items...


I don't think this can be considered mainstream investment (even though there are many rich people nowadays)

I think converting bitcoins to monero is not best option
because we must making deposit to altcoins markets
and it is needs much time.

The most simple to be full anonymous using bitcoins
mixing services is like https://[banned mixer] or other
bitcoin mixing services.

Ah fuck off socialists.

The rich are already creating all the jobs and the products, they should pay shit actually.

In fact taxes should be 0 everywhere because it makes no sense anyway.


But either way these small countries get all their revenue from bank deposits, the Swiss just fucked up their 200 years of banking traditions with this move. Good job stupid socialists.

Now the rich will move to other bank havens, and the Swiss have just ruined their whole economy.

Exactly, for some bitcoin will work as tax haven, for some not, for some traditional banking system will do fine.
All depends, for me bitcoin is better than gold, easier to hold, easier to trade.

I have seen this coming for a long time already... just take ProtonMail as a typical example. At one stage they were the most anonymous

web based email provider, but since Europe has been targeted by terrorists, Switzerland has been working with the US government to

prevent these attacks and ProtonMail has come under fire. Can we blame them or is this just an excuse to infringe on people's privacy, like

they are doing in the USA. ?

Wow that not cool for the people who have using a swiss bank account for a long time. I am pretty sure that a lot of money will fly away from there. The people will need to be creative and find another way like buying bitcoins or move money to countries where they keep them privacy secret.

I think people have the right to have they privacy, this law is another way for the government to have more power.

There are still ways to hide money in Switzerland, it just got more difficult, and more expensive. You can hide behind a Swiss lawyer, by example.
There are also plenty of non Swiss who have a bank account in Switzerland without anything to hide.

Its a very old story after when swiss banks decided to give the information of the account holders to other country , most of the big account holder have moved their account to other country.

I dont think they wanted to do this. The US forced them or they would be disconnected from the banking system.

That doesnt make sense, most money held there is probably from US businessman and rich people, who have lobby power over the regulators.

Why would they do such things?

Besides they are already moving to Singapore, so Switzerland is already losing his shine, with or without this decision, this was just the final nail in the coffin.

And we also have Bitcoin, and other currencies.

Swiss doesn't mean a single bank, it has got several banks which as a whole is described as Swiss bank. Importantly one such might have issued statement of considering a new haven for funds. As users suggested bitcoin cannot be made completely anonymous with VPN and TOR, because those Swiss accounts have huge funds which on transaction can easily tracked. Even on entering darkweb you'll be notified, you're entering on your own risk even on using TOR. This is just to confirm anything could happen we're not responsible. It also describes, you might be tracked and might go till death sentence to be the maximum for using.

If the big whales start to use bitcoin as a store of value then  the biggest pump in the price may come but personally I think they are going to try options familiar to them first, like other tax havens, gold and silver and all that jazz.

I agree, and I think Bitcoin can be used as a store of value for other countries as well.  In fact anyone can store money in Bitcoin as long as their government doesn't make it illegal.  Tax issues come in to play when they try to cash out though, correct?