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RE: New law will require travelers entering the US to reveal digital currency holdings
People use US dollars for terrorism, but just because they do, doesn't mean the dollar is bad.
People use US dollars for terrorism, but just because they do, doesn't mean the dollar is bad.
Like I said, anything can be used for barter. There is nothing particularly special about cryptocurrency except that it's easier to do accounting and hard to counterfeit, but the same could happen and has happened without cryptocurrency. The point here is there may be legit concerns about terrorist finance but the vast majority of cryptocurrency users aren't interested in terrorism and have nothing to do with that.
So these "tough" laws don't seem like they'll be any more effective for deterring terrorism than the situation at airports. The vast majority of innocent people get inconvenienced yet there hasn't been any statistics released to indicate a measurable effect on public safety. If we are going to be inconvenienced then they owe it to us to make sure it's an effective policy and I'm not sure how they intend to measure the effectiveness of this policy.
Also the physical border being an inspection point doesn't make a lot of sense when digital currency isn't physically detectable. I mean how exactly is it supposed to work? What if the terrorists are using brain wallets and ordinary users are carrying Nano or Trezors?
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This would be a way for them to target people, confiscate devices, and increase spending. This is the kind of law making that makes me glad to be a libertarian. This isn't designed to stop criminals, who could always leave their devices outside the country. This is designed to stop the Average Joe from exercising the right to free movement.