What would be the best way to get through customs at an airport with your Btc?

[apogio]

(d) then go back to the origin country and destroy the backup you had there

Or just move your coins to a new wallet

But then you would have to transfer them to the destination country.
So when being at the destination country you should create one wallet and transfer the coins there instead of backing up the old one.
Yeap, I agree with this approach! Problem solved! Two less air tickets this way!

[Forsyth Jones]

I checked this out and I 've noted that you don't recommend it, but just for discussion, my problems are:

1. what if you successfuly travel to country X and you realise you can't restore your wallet because you don't remember how to? The brain can work amazingly bizzare in some situations.
2. what if you need to go to another country permanently? In this case you can't have a backup at the origin country, because you 're leaving forever.

You could, theoretically, and I think it's the only solution:
(a) keep a backup at the origin country
(b) travel to the destination, having memorized the wallet
(c) restore the wallet and back it up at the destination and
(d) then go back to the origin country and destroy the backup you had there

Yes... I've been reading about border wallets for about a year now and never found the concept appealing, so I set it aside, I don't even remember how they work anymore.

But if I were to move to another country, here's what I'd do:

a) Yes, I'd maintain my backup in the origin country, as it's encrypted with a decoy seed (a valid BIP39 phrase). For those who follow my posts about cryptografy, know I'm referring to seed-XOR/BIP85/seed-otp protection.

b) Absolutely, it wouldn't be a problem for me.

c, d) I certainly wouldn't make a return trip just to destroy the origin country backup, return to (a).

SuperBitMan

As for the seeds, I'd leave them as they are, maybe I'd carry them written in a notepad(or just on a piece of paper) or encrypted with AES or GPG on USB drives and SD cards.

I probably wouldn't uninstall anything. I think it's very unlikely I'd be stopped at customs over a piece of paper with 12 random words, which would probably be in the middle of mess of clothes and some electronics.
I'd just make sure to keep a backup with me in my carry-on luggage, never in checked baggage. The same goes for my hardware wallets.

edit: regardless of the method, always test the backup before traveling.

[takuma sato]

I checked this out and I 've noted that you don't recommend it, but just for discussion, my problems are:

1. what if you successfuly travel to country X and you realise you can't restore your wallet because you don't remember how to? The brain can work amazingly bizzare in some situations.
2. what if you need to go to another country permanently? In this case you can't have a backup at the origin country, because you 're leaving forever.

You could, theoretically, and I think it's the only solution:
(a) keep a backup at the origin country
(b) travel to the destination, having memorized the wallet
(c) restore the wallet and back it up at the destination and
(d) then go back to the origin country and destroy the backup you had there

Yes... I've been reading about border wallets for about a year now and never found the concept appealing, so I set it aside, I don't even remember how they work anymore.

But if I were to move to another country, here's what I'd do:

a) Yes, I'd maintain my backup in the origin country, as it's encrypted with a decoy seed (a valid BIP39 phrase). For those who follow my posts about cryptografy, know I'm referring to seed-XOR/BIP85/seed-otp protection.

b) Absolutely, it wouldn't be a problem for me.

c, d) I certainly wouldn't make a return trip just to destroy the origin country backup, return to (a).

SuperBitMan

As for the seeds, I'd leave them as they are, maybe I'd carry them written in a notepad(or just on a piece of paper) or encrypted with AES or GPG on USB drives and SD cards.

I probably wouldn't uninstall anything. I think it's very unlikely I'd be stopped at customs over a piece of paper with 12 random words, which would probably be in the middle of mess of clothes and some electronics.
I'd just make sure to keep a backup with me in my carry-on luggage, never in checked baggage. The same goes for my hardware wallets.

edit: regardless of the method, always test the backup before traveling.

Context always matter. If you are fleeing away from China because they have just dropped a law that says owning any BTC is punished with jail or something like that, then you don't want to gamble your freedom, what you want is to get your wallet encrypted with dm-crypt or any other open source encryption software, put it online somewhere in an attachment, and then move to the next country, and then recover your backup now that you are safe. You must have destroyed your local copies before doing this so if the Chinese go house by house looking for wallets they find nothing. The big risk here is there is a brief period of time where you are trusting online copies to remain, if your online copies are lost, you would be wrecked. So you want to have backups in various places.
The password must be impossible to crack, so now your problem is storing this password somewhere. Think of creative ways to travel with a password that does not identify as an obvious password for your wallet. This is the only way I can think off to do this. I think sooner or later some of these governments will become dystopic enough to knock door per door in search of BTC so you must plan ahead.

[apogio]

Context always matter. If you are fleeing away from China because they have just dropped a law that says owning any BTC is punished with jail or something like that, then you don't want to gamble your freedom, what you want is to get your wallet encrypted with dm-crypt or any other open source encryption software, put it online somewhere in an attachment, and then move to the next country, and then recover your backup now that you are safe. You must have destroyed your local copies before doing this so if the Chinese go house by house looking for wallets they find nothing. The big risk here is there is a brief period of time where you are trusting online copies to remain, if your online copies are lost, you would be wrecked. So you want to have backups in various places.
The password must be impossible to crack, so now your problem is storing this password somewhere. Think of creative ways to travel with a password that does not identify as an obvious password for your wallet. This is the only way I can think off to do this. I think sooner or later some of these governments will become dystopic enough to knock door per door in search of BTC so you must plan ahead.

As a sidenote, since everything that is backed up in the cloud never gets actually erased, when you reach your destination you should create a new wallet and move the funds there. Otherwise you will have a strange feeling that your backup is somewhere available on the internet, even if it seems (and may be) infeasible to crack the encryption.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

For the truly paranoid out there, do remember that all inputs & outputs from any address are indelibly embedded into a blockchain. It's what they do. If "They" have sufficient interest in you and your crypto to dig deeper, moving it from one wallet to a different new one still keeps you linked to the old address and if "They" know your old address, well...

[apogio]

For the truly paranoid out there, do remember that all inputs & outputs from any address are indelibly embedded into a blockchain. It's what they do. If "They" have sufficient interest in you and your crypto moving it from one wallet to another still keeps you linked to the old address...

Luckily, you can do some coinjoins, some exchanges for XMR or any other more private crypto, some LN swaps or some Liquid peg-in and peg-out. But yes I think we 're getting paranoid now. The resume is that you need to make sure not to lose your coins  Making them private is an extra milestone.

[philipma1957]

For the truly paranoid out there, do remember that all inputs & outputs from any address are indelibly embedded into a blockchain. It's what they do. If "They" have sufficient interest in you and your crypto moving it from one wallet to a different new one still keeps you linked to the old address and if "They" know your old address, well...

this ^


and I still am not a fan of this thread in particular.

I would still go with multiple emails with pieces of the seed.

And even a bit of the seed on a piece of paper in your wallet.

I just did a seed

https://getcoinplate.com/bip39-seed-phrase-mnemonics-generator-offline-online-tool/?srsltid=AfmBOorPwBoSpBEP97ygSq1doNLx5sWBZMLY7YxX0I7NfE8pYahg7je7&v=0b3b97fa6688


broken email

1)email
member
produce


green
sister        write in your notes in your phone     Get a green dress for sister.






2 email
assume
swift
oyster
little

3 email
know
assault
junior
april

4 email
reject
pole
state
shrug

5 email
alpha
thought
pudding
strike

6 email
exchange
caught
grow
excess

[NotFuzzyWarm]

...
and I still am not a fan of this thread in particular.
...

Ditto but popped in here to keep some needed perspective to the subject. Still don't get the concern folks have about it 

[takuma sato]

Context always matter. If you are fleeing away from China because they have just dropped a law that says owning any BTC is punished with jail or something like that, then you don't want to gamble your freedom, what you want is to get your wallet encrypted with dm-crypt or any other open source encryption software, put it online somewhere in an attachment, and then move to the next country, and then recover your backup now that you are safe. You must have destroyed your local copies before doing this so if the Chinese go house by house looking for wallets they find nothing. The big risk here is there is a brief period of time where you are trusting online copies to remain, if your online copies are lost, you would be wrecked. So you want to have backups in various places.
The password must be impossible to crack, so now your problem is storing this password somewhere. Think of creative ways to travel with a password that does not identify as an obvious password for your wallet. This is the only way I can think off to do this. I think sooner or later some of these governments will become dystopic enough to knock door per door in search of BTC so you must plan ahead.

As a sidenote, since everything that is backed up in the cloud never gets actually erased, when you reach your destination you should create a new wallet and move the funds there. Otherwise you will have a strange feeling that your backup is somewhere available on the internet, even if it seems (and may be) infeasible to crack the encryption.

Good point, for extra measure you could indeed just move your funds. However, if you've got like 100 utxos, it will be hell moving the funds. How do you do it without ruining your privacy? You should at some point, move the funds, but the logistics involved sucks. Everytime you move countries, you would need to transact the entire wallet into other addresses. If you want to keep your privacy you would need to do 100 transactions into other different 100 addresses, or at least, have 10 transactions, but someone that bothered to check would see you own these 10 if they knew at least one of them. The problem with "consolidating btc addresses" is that it ruins your privacy. If you have been accepting payments for years in different addresses and you send it all to a few, then your privacy has been decreased.

[philipma1957]

...
and I still am not a fan of this thread in particular.
...

Ditto but popped in here to keep some needed perspective to the subject. Still don't get the concern folks have about it 

Well to me where am I going with my coin in a wallet on my body. The answer is nowhere.

Also if I leave America with all my corn they can do a clawback if they chose so why worry.

[Forsyth Jones]

Ditto but popped in here to keep some needed perspective to the subject. Still don't get the concern folks have about it 

This is great for testing folks' knowledge and creativity lol... even though we're revealing everything in a public forum like this...

In case of a criminal investigation... Agent Smith... I'm just here for the technology and curiosity.. I don't even know what bitcoin is and I hate those who do 

Context always matter. If you are fleeing away from China because they have just dropped a law that says owning any BTC is punished with jail or something like that, then you don't want to gamble your freedom, what you want is to get your wallet encrypted with dm-crypt or any other open source encryption software...

Encryption and steganography are like helmets,they won't prevent 100% of deaths, but they'll minimize impact in case an accident. Depending on severity, you might walk away unscathed... I wouldn't enter North Korea with an Electrum on a USB drive, because encryption doesn't protect against a $5 wrench attack. It only guards against unauthorized access and brute force attacks.

Another thing is if your country becomes a communist dystopia... the best thing to do is to flee that country with or without suitcases... Why risk your physical safety?

You must have destroyed your local copies before doing this so if the Chinese go house by house looking for wallets they find nothing. ...

Destroying a backup is nonsense, if you suspect something, just transfer the funds to another wallet and make a new backup.

[apogio]

However, if you've got like 100 utxos, it will be hell moving the funds. How do you do it without ruining your privacy? You should at some point, move the funds, but the logistics involved sucks. Everytime you move countries, you would need to transact the entire wallet into other addresses. If you want to keep your privacy you would need to do 100 transactions into other different 100 addresses, or at least, have 10 transactions, but someone that bothered to check would see you own these 10 if they knew at least one of them. The problem with "consolidating btc addresses" is that it ruins your privacy. If you have been accepting payments for years in different addresses and you send it all to a few, then your privacy has been decreased.

Like you said, at some point you should move the funds. Out of curiousity, what would you do then? I guess you 'd send the utxos individually. So, the only thing I can think of, is the fact that moving to another country is a good reason to do this transfer. If you 're lucky, you may have a bunch of utxos that can be consolidated. If not, then you have to pay fees and spend time sending each one individually. And this is where I 'd start thinking if it's really worth it.

[LoyceV]

green
sister        write in your notes in your phone     Get a green dress for sister.

This quickly increases the number of possibilities:
819: green
534: dress
1613: sister

if you've got like 100 utxos, it will be hell moving the funds. How do you do it without ruining your privacy?

That would be a good moment to think about which inputs to consolidate, and which to keep separate. Especially now that fees are low, it can save you a lot on transaction fees later.

The problem with "consolidating btc addresses" is that it ruins your privacy.

I'd say: "it depends". Most people won't have that many inputs that need to stay separated at all costs.

Everytime you move countries, you would need to transact the entire wallet into other addresses.

Are those hypothetical problems, or are you really moving to different countries frequently enough to have to worry about moving all your inputs to different addresses that often?

I wouldn't enter North Korea with an Electrum on a USB drive, because encryption doesn't protect against a $5 wrench attack.

I made it a lot safer by wiping out most of your comment

[apogio]

That would be a good moment to think about which inputs to consolidate, and which to keep separate. Especially now that fees are low, it can save you a lot on transaction fees later.

Exactly, I 've pointed it out above, but as an example that I forgot to mention, if you get paid from a signature campaign at the address X, then after Y weeks you 're gonna have Y UTXOs on the same address. I suppose it won't ruin your privacy if you consolidate them.

In general, if you have UTXOs on the same address, you can consolidate them (even at the same address).

[takuma sato]

That would be a good moment to think about which inputs to consolidate, and which to keep separate. Especially now that fees are low, it can save you a lot on transaction fees later.

Exactly, I 've pointed it out above, but as an example that I forgot to mention, if you get paid from a signature campaign at the address X, then after Y weeks you 're gonna have Y UTXOs on the same address. I suppose it won't ruin your privacy if you consolidate them.

In general, if you have UTXOs on the same address, you can consolidate them (even at the same address).

If you switch your recieving address for each different signature campaing (for example) then after years you will have a lot of different addresses with payments. And on top of that, the recieving addresses are all public, so if you ever use money from your signature campaings to pay for anything, if they are curious and google your address, they would find your account, your political views, a lot of possible data about you, as well as a screener of how much money you have made over the years. Not a good luck for privacy. So you would need to find a way to be able to pay with your bitcoin in a way that does not tie you to to your public addresses that have you shared here or elsewhere. This makes bitcoin annoying to use since you are going to need to make additional transactions and think how you are going to make them to keep it private. And now with regulators hating on mixers, you cannot just simply mix the stuff and solve the problem, since if you want to cash out to buy a house when BTC is worth $1,000,000 or whatever, you will not be able to do so.

[apogio]

If you switch your recieving address for each different signature campaing (for example) then after years you will have a lot of different addresses with payments.

I suppose yes, although I don't think a user will switch campaigns too often. They definitely will, but I think that most users stick to a campaign for some months.

So you would need to find a way to be able to pay with your bitcoin in a way that does not tie you to to your public addresses that have you shared here or elsewhere.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, but my suggestions are:
(1) coinjoins
(2) swap for XMR and then back to BTC
(3) LN swaps
(4) Liquid BTC peg-in and peg-out

If I was worried that my funds from campaigns A (address X), B (address Y), C (address Z) were going to be linked and prove that they 're paid to the same person, I would simply do one of the above methods on each payment individually.
But I am not worried because it's public data that apogio has received money from campaigns A,B,C on addresses X,Y,Z.

[Free Market Capitalist]

I am glad that a thread of mine has given so much to discuss. I was originally thinking of a simple case, where you have a certain amount of bitcoin and you want to take with you to another country only a part of it, but that may exceed the limit of what could give you problems to be detected, more than 10.000€.

I keep reading you, although without commenting, and I see that the solutions proposed could be used to leave or escape your country in a hypothetical scenario with all the bitcoin you have.

However, the more I read I think the less clear I have it. For my first scenario I think the seeds written with invisible ink would be the best option, as I commented. And it is also clear to me that it is unlikely to find a problem in customs even if it carries a HW or mobile wallet. But even if something went wrong you would still have the rest of the bitcoin back home.

If I had to take it all because I'm moving to another country I'm not sure what I would do, although it's so hypothetical that I'm not too worried about it.

[Cricktor]

The topic moved around a bit, recently with a short excursion to Bitcoin privacy or it's lack of it. Coins are linked via transactions and those are public. If you can attribute coins or transactions to some person you can see a lot more than desired.

We can only obfuscate the links and make attribution a pain in the ass or a lot of guesswork.

I see an advantage of Bitcoin, compared to physical goods like physical money or gold or valuable stuff, because all coins are only "on the Bitcoin blockchain". You don't need to carry them with you. To cross borders with your Bitcoins, you "only" need to transport a way to access or reconstruct your wallet, your private keys which enable you to move your coins on the blockchain.

A lot of ways have been proposed how to hide and carry your wallet or key reconstruction details with you so that it's not obvious to spot. Whatever procedure you choose or prefer: keep it simple, keep it safe, don't shoot yourself in your feet.

I can't recall if it has been discussed if you can keep cool and not acting suspicious knowing what you hide when you cross borders. I guess there's no recipe and I have none, either. Would it help to spin the mantra "Keep calm, you're not doing anything wrong"?

[Smartprofit]

The topic moved around a bit, recently with a short excursion to Bitcoin privacy or it's lack of it. Coins are linked via transactions and those are public. If you can attribute coins or transactions to some person you can see a lot more than desired.

We can only obfuscate the links and make attribution a pain in the ass or a lot of guesswork.

I see an advantage of Bitcoin, compared to physical goods like physical money or gold or valuable stuff, because all coins are only "on the Bitcoin blockchain". You don't need to carry them with you. To cross borders with your Bitcoins, you "only" need to transport a way to access or reconstruct your wallet, your private keys which enable you to move your coins on the blockchain.

A lot of ways have been proposed how to hide and carry your wallet or key reconstruction details with you so that it's not obvious to spot. Whatever procedure you choose or prefer: keep it simple, keep it safe, don't shoot yourself in your feet.

I can't recall if it has been discussed if you can keep cool and not acting suspicious knowing what you hide when you cross borders. I guess there's no recipe and I have none, either. Would it help to spin the mantra "Keep calm, you're not doing anything wrong"?

You are absolutely right, psychological preparation is also very important in this situation. Yes, in my opinion, such psychological exercises as meditation or reading special mantras (psychological litanies) can help you. At the same time, such training should be done systematically.

You can also attend acting or improvisation courses. There are also board games, such as "Mafia". These games teach people to lie.

People are given cards with certain game roles - civilians, mafia, police commissioner, maniac, etc. The game time is divided into two parts - day and night. During the day, players can discuss among themselves, determining which of the players is the mafioso. By voting, one of the players is chosen for this role and is "executed" (he leaves the game). At night, the mafia "wakes up" and destroys one of the inhabitants of the world. As a result, at the end of the game, either the mafia or the civilians win.  

To win this game, you need to be able to lie and not show your true emotions to strangers. Of course, such skills will help you pass customs at the airport without problems (if all other conditions are met).

Despite all the technical difficulties, in my opinion, Bitcoin provides the best way to move capital across international borders, from one country to another.

[pushups44]

It's worth mentioning that security agents have been busted stealing cash and valuables from passengers at airports and ports. Here is one example:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/19/travel/naples-florida-cbp-officer-stealing-cash-passengers/index.html

I was led to this post and felt the need to warn people about it, because it's a fact that passengers get their valuables stolen at airports and ports in the U.S. all the time.