Bitcoin Forum

A new bill, S.1241 – Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017, would make it a money laundering offense to cross the American border with more than $10,000 in undeclared cryptocurrency. The stated goal of this legislation is to bolster America’s “border protection strategy to interdict and detect prepaid access devices, digital currencies, or other similar instruments, at border crossings and other ports of entry for the United States.

S. 1421 would have the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protections agencies to work together and present Congress with a plan to detect digital currencies at border crossings and information on the infrastructure needed. Needless to say, everyone is curious as to what kind of infrastructure would need to be developed to “detect” the presence of digital currency at border crossings. Suffice to say, the presence of such language in the proposed law reveals the deep lack of understanding that our lawmakers have when it comes to the internet, privacy, and especially digital currencies.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1241/text#toc-idea0e9489fc8f46379f95bb56c8bbbda5

Fortunately it's pretty difficult to tell when someone is "crossing the border with cryptocurrency" since it doesn't have to have any physical presence.

I sure as hell wouldn't take a TREZOR or another dead giveaway on a plane, but I would confidently take my phone or laptop with wallets on them, and I would probably be happy to take a brain wallet or even use a third party like an exchange or online wallet to briefly hold the coins while I cross the border.

Since BTC is very much an international currency, it's pretty much irrelevant what customs think, provided that you exercise a reasonable amount of caution.

Or you can just not take anything and login to your wallet from anywhere in their world. You can't take something digital with you across borders this is the stupidist thing I have hear for a long time here. Why would you want to declare something you can send anywhere in the world whenever you feel like? Your topic makes no sense where exactly did you get this information from?

As the above user said you can just use a phone. He they going to know what is on your devices or even if they k ow you have a trezor they can't drive how many bitcoin you own.

This was introduced to committee in MAY, nothing  has come through with it so I'm going to be guessing that's going to be the status quo on this. The government (Republican controlled) has much bigger fish to fry then Bitcoin right now, as they're currently dealing with big issues such as Tax Reform.

If this ever does come to fruition it's going to take some REAL TIME for it to actually. So I wouldn't worry at the moment.

I have a trillion-dollar cryptocurrency idea in my head. Should I declare it at the border? It's gonna suck to have to pay taxes on a trillion-dollar virtual asset when I haven't even had the chance to get any income from it but, hey, that's life, right?

What's hilarious is that they write bills like this and then they wonder why the price of "that Bitcoin thing" just keeps skyrocketing. If they keep up like this, Bitcoin's going to be a steal at $10k...

Can't the government just accept that they've lost...

I mean it's pretty obvious that in the next 20 years everyone is going to be using crypto. The government just have to suck up to the fact that they are losing power.

I think it's difficult even impossible to detect or know people who carry digital currencies that have no physical, digital currency simply by using the internet network and a laptop device to access it, I find it difficult to detect digital money ownership.

Another way of suppression, this new bill will have a chain reaction in other country's customs regulations. This new bill will give a new idea to a country who have issues regarding cryptocurrency and will be replicated to their country's border crossing laws. This bill is so absurd, to avoid interdiction I'll have to remove any related cryptocurrency application on my cell phone, laptop or tablet before crossing a border and re-install it again.

This was only meant for fiat, damn this is now being implemented for crypto currency. Now that US has passed a bill on it, now you can expect a lot of countries to follow up and do the same. Normal people don't have to worry because they earn by legit ways and they can declare their crypto currencies or whatever. What I would like to see about this new bill is on how US is planning to do the follow up on this or in what terms and methods are going to be used for working towards this restriction.

They are going to look for your seed in your baggage! lol

First is that it is going to be hard to track someone who is doing these things, and if there is any that is currently doing this stuff like laundering then this person is exercising extreme caution. so to say this can only be applicable in the states, crossing border will be different. I suggest not to take a trezor with you as the border people are very thorough in their search and if you are suspected then you will be in trouble but if you just take a cellphone and or a laptop you can just put your bitcoin on that wallet then there will be less suspicion and you can just get away without being noticed that you have crossed the border with x amount of money in bitcoin.

So if I sell a domain name for 2 Bitcoin via Name Silo, and they pay me as an Englishman - is that a cross-border transaction? and what if I sell the name to a Chinese investor for 3 Bitcoin. Is that yet another cross-border number. How are they going to value thes virtual assets anyway?

Not sure how it will work or whether it will really work for that matter. And how are they going to detect the presence of digital currencies at border crossings? What if a criminal who is guilty of money laundering just waltz in without any devices with him or uses a clean one. We know they can easily access their wallets from an internet cafe or they can simply purchase gadgets once they're in. As much as we'd like to put an end to money laundering especially those that uses btc in their transactions, it will be hard to do so.

The amount of resources that it would take for governments to fully control cryptos is astronomical.

And as in the United States will be on the border to comply with such a law, if you just cross the border with a digital key from your wallet and then from any device you can enter with this key and get access in the US to any amount that will be stored on this purse. Indeed, laws are written by people who do not understand the essence of the crypto currency.

Satoshi bless those people!

I can understand if the government impose that law for fiat currency. But how the government is going to impose this law on digital currencies. I cant understand this. My point is its impossible for the government to identify persons who are holding cryptocurrencies and this law is not going to workout for cryptocurrencies .

It seems almost impossible to prove ... or too easy to prove.... depending on how the law is written.

Even if you have a Trezor on you, can the government force you to unlock it?

On the other hand, if you have your phone on you, and a large crypto holding in an online wallet, they could argue you crossed the board with access to the Crypto...

It's probably going to be one of the laws that gets unevenly enforced depending on your religion and skin color.

What if you smuggle it in your butt, prison style? :D


And they are made to be broken. Although i'm not planning to go to the US anytime soon I couldn't care less about such stupid law. I haven't had my computer checked even once. I could've had child porn in there or plans for the next terror attack. Why would anyone want to strip me of my rights (literally :D) and waste time looking for a private key?

There's no need to cite cryptocurrencies for this regulation. What happens if I pick up my credit card (I don't have, anyway) or debit card and have a line of credit or account balance that exceeds those limits? What is the difference between holding an undeclared cryptocurrency or an account balance? I can easily cash out crypto or use a fiat ATM to withdraw cash from my account balance and spend the cash after...
Crossing the border with cryptocurrencies... How will they check if I don't have my seed tattoed on my skin on different parts of my body...

it's just a scare tactic. most people can be scared into compliance, and i'm sure that's the intention here. the u.s. government is definitely smart enough to realize that they can't realistically control cross-border payments with cryptocurrencies.

i'm really curious to see how courts would interpret "possession" in this context. merely possessing a private key is not physical possession of funds. the fact that many people could have access to a single private key seems problematic. if five people have access to a key with $10k on it, are they all required to declare? if so, the law is illogical. what about multi-signature wallets?

anyway, in this context, cryptography will become increasingly important. i'm going to get in the habit of "encoding" an HD wallet seed (12 words) manually throughout handwritten notes/schedules/calendars. only a trained eye who is familiar with the seed should be able to recognize it. brain wallets for the win!

Well, that seems fair. Pretty much every country I've been in has a certain variation of this. They're simply including cryptocurrencies in the guidelines. This is good, in my opinion, because it puts cryptocurrencies into the same level as fiat currencies and gold. If people start seeing this in airports, they would know Bitcoin and alts are here to stay.

I don't know how they would implement it though, as your wallet could be safely up the cloud or in your laptop. They probably just crafted this to have an excuse to punish people who they actually catch in the act of money laundering with crypto.