Dear weeweww32,

During a routine audit of registered exchanges we discovered that you transferred/received $30k of the crypto token Montero.

Under penalty of perjury provide us with documentation as to the destination/source of this funds within 7 business day.

Failing to do so is a felony under the Crypto act of 2022.

Cheerio

The Government

"During a routine audit of registered exchanges". The obvious answer here seems to be "don't use a registered exchange". Might cost a few basis points but nothing to be alarmed about and likely cheaper than taxes.

I might be missing something, but isn't part of the allure of it all being a blockchain the ledger that will, for ever after show that such and such wallet received 30k on a particular date & time - potentially requiring some stitching that would probably be trivial to do if the actual transfer was broken up into a series of smaller transfers?

And if you're using a shared wallet that obscures internal money movements then the feds can still see any entry/exit point activity - they might just be uncertain about what happened to the money in the middle.

I guess if you created a private coin for your nefarious dealings you could keep it really hidden (maybe one tied as a stable coin to a more major coin) - but only so long as you managed to keep the feds from getting a ledger view of the private coin - which would require limiting the spending power of that coin to only parties you strongly trusted which, again, would strongly devalue the coin.

The real world equivalent might be deciding, as a criminal ring, to use gems as a currency to avoid handling USD directly too often - but those gems become worthless apart from their inherent value as soon as trust collapses.

With Monero, no one can see the sender, destination or amount of any transaction.

But people can see the car/house/yacht etc you bought with it.

If you want to actually enjoy your wealth you better find a way to legalize your anonymous money and pay taxes on it.

"I dunno...It just appeared in my crypto Wallet" is not convincing

doesn't that require going through a centralized exchange, or at least going through the trouble of organizing an OTC trade?

There are decentralized exchanges like Bisq