Bitcoin and other digital assets _hide_ the problem. If the TSA knew you had a bitcoin wallet on the hard drive, they could seize that instead.

If you have full-disk-encryption and a crypto-wallet passphrase, you may be held on contempt charges anyways. That might be better, it might not. The underlying problem of "the state can seize your assets if you act 'suspicious'" is still there.

If you have a good enough memory, you can memorize a wallet seed. There's no seizing that.

this is the way

To be pedantic, I don’t think they can hold you in contempt without also involving you in the process, giving you some legal say to fight it. The whole issue with civil asset forfeiture is that it divorces the property from its owner, legally speaking.

You should research this. A judge can order you to provide the passphrase to decrypt the storage that contains the bitcoin wallet if it is a foregone conclusion that there is one on there, and if you refuse then you can be held in contempt and jailed until you do provide it. There is no time limit to contempt of court imprisonment because you are free to stop being in contempt whenever you choose. You will have a very hard time getting an appeals court to issue a mandamus order to the judge that jailed you for contempt, and by "hard" I mean "impossible".

Yes but those aren’t civil asset forfeiture cases, which this discussion is about.

Show me a bitcoin ATM where I can withdraw $82k cash.

I hear you. You can't get $82k cash from an ATM, you need a flesh and blood teller for that. Fine, fine, if there's a bank of bitcoin that will facilitate my $82k withdrawal, I'd be happy with that.

Not at once*.

You can spread it out over time. Banks would rather you did it in person so they can do the paperwork fpr large cash transactions once instead of 41 times.

A friend of mine recently discovered that their bank's ATM has a $400 daily limit per customer. That isn't the account limit -- absurdly, that can be raised over the phone -- the ATM limit cannot be.

That's interesting. That may be new. I'm pretty sure I used to do 600 at a time, and I know I did 1200 at least once back in college.

Which is hilarious, in a tragic way, because I've almost always ended up as an outlier in most sets of data that I end up in. Nice to know somewhere along the way the powersthat be decided to make everyone's life even more miserably constrained, probably in the name of risk mitigation.

Feasibly, couldn't this be because they don't want one person to completely drain an ATM requiring another re-ship/restock?

For the gas station ones? Absolutely, that's a risky business. For a whole-ass bank that can reload the machine from behind? I don't really see it

Yeah, but even in a whole-ass bank if you empty out an ATM at night it's not being refilled until the next business day?

border agents are allowed to warrantlessly search electronic devices when you fly, including online accounts that you control, and have the power to detain you in order to compel you to divulge passwords. if you have bitcoin on you when you fly, or simply have a coinbase wallet, it's just as vulnerable as cash.

I wouldn't say it's just as vulnerable. It's at least slightly less convenient if they have to drag you in front of a judge to try and get you found in contempt of court; law enforcement try to avoid actual defendants being able to get in a courtroom for a reason.

You do not have to divulge your password. If you don't, you might be deported if you are not a citizen. If you're a citizen, your device might be seized and you lose a day or so, but that's the worst of it

Bitcoin doesn't fix this at all. In any way. Bitcoin's value fluctuates wildly.

The value of your cash fluctuates wildly to zero when the government can seize it without due process and you can't get it back.

Well, you are right about that, but that doesn't change the fact that Bitcoin does not solve this problem.

if the value of a currency fluctuates to zero, and the government seizes your wallet while it's worthless, they've taken nothing and you are financially uninjured. no rights violated. checkmate

dogecoin is the ultimate asset of the digital nomad

Sure but he meant to say crypto currency. USDC, DAI, tether, whatever.

The price of Bitcoin could change massively during the time you deposit it and then withdraw.

Then hold a stablecoin instead. I believe the GP meant to refer to crypto currency, not BTC in particular.

Monero, actually.

True, but now you have two problems.