I still don't see how. When we bought our house in the UK I sent the entire transfer from my phone, paid 0 fee, and it arrived 30 seconds later. Why would I use bitcoin for it?
Meanwhile, if I want to donate over $25,000 to charity in the US, I have to go into the bank (in person even during the pandemic) spend half an hour while they fill out forms, pay a $12 fee (still negligible, granted), and they'll process it within 12 hours.
Bitcoin might not be as good as the UK, but you have to understand that the consumer US financial system remains stuck in the 1980s.
> if I want to donate over $25,000 to charity in the US, I have to go into the bank (in person even during the pandemic) spend half an hour while they fill out forms, pay a $12 fee (still negligible, granted), and they'll process it within 12 hours.
You can do it from home for a negligible fee ($0-$3) if you're ok with ACH instead.
(Same-day ACH has a max of $100k, though it used to be $25k. Next-day ACH is something like $100M, though your bank likely has a lower limit.)
I’m currently buying a house internationally. International wire transfers take multiple days and I have to produce all sorts of documents for the receiving country’s government showing the source of the money. It’s an annoying and lengthy process. I’d much rather send BTC to a wallet than this.
If you are buying and selling real estate in a functioning jurisdiction, hiding your identity by making the payment opaque is not going to do much for you.
There are title deeds and tax rolls. In many jurisdictions you have obligations like building codes that need to be inspected and an owner needs to be held to account. If you need privacy, you have to set up shell companies to act as the legal owner, not hide the payment from your bank or government.
Speaking of showing the source of the money, if you bought my house from me with bitcoin, I would have to speak to a lawyer about not running afoul of money-laundering regulations. And no, I won’t take the internet’s word for it that somehow, those laws only pertain to fiat currency.
Something tells me that the cost of fighting my government in court would far exceed the value of my home regardless of whether I was technically in the right not to fill out all those same forms.
It would be easier, this TX came from my work's hotwallet & this one was part of my inheritance, you can see these TXs where that address sent to the tax authority assuring all tax has been paid as opposed to being passed around a call centre to talk to "Bob" so the bank can provide those details.
So......exactly the same way it works with a bank nowadays? When I did it it was just a printed statement from my bank(that I printed myself), showing money arriving from X account, Y amount paid for tax, document from solicitor confirming inheritence, 3 copies of my payslip, done. How exactly is that easier with bitcoin?
No they don't? I frequently send large(about £50k/month) amounts of money between one EU country and UK, we always pay extra(50 euro) to have the transfer done as an express transfer and the money arrives within 60 minutes in the UK bank. Or if you don't mind doing a SEPA transfer then it's 15 minutes. And no, I was never asked to prove any source of anything, it's an invoice payment, it goes straight through.
Maybe by "international" you mean something else, but at least in the EU(and EEA and UK) transfers can be incredibly quick.
Apologies, I thought I was being clear. A payment system that lets people transfer unlimited amounts of value to 14x more people than SEPA (presuming internet access), without censorship, irreversibly, and effectively for free, has, it seems to me, substantial value.
Even if it's less useful than, say, access to SEPA, it'd have to be 14x less valuable to break even (again, presuming internet access available to everyone, which isn't a thing yet).
The main reason for a lot of that documentation is know your customer/anti-money-laundering laws. Even if you were sending BTC, you would still have to provide that documentation to not break the law.
Well I mean, clearly they make their money elsewhere. I don't pay anything for having an account, debit card for it, or for making any transfers - that's with barclays. So their entire money making process is elsewhere.
You can't just buy a house with a suitcase full of cash these days, it's not possible. The gov will be asking where that money came from, to prevent money laundering and to ensure it's not proceeds of crime. Whether not you agree with that, this is the situation.
The idea that somehow they'll let you buy something with Bitcoin without requiring the same level of disclosure is a complete fantasy.
While I think technically there isn't anything stopping you from buying a house with hard cash in the UK, I very much doubt that either side's solicitor would agree to it without extensive documentation as to where how and when you got that cash.
> You can't just buy a house with a suitcase full of cash these days, it's not possible
I must point out I know a couple people who did that in Hungary in the last ten years, just because it seemed absolutely insane to me (cheques don't exist here, either..).
I am reasonably sure this isn't that common though, and the government still tracks the transaction :)
