Cryptocurrency will not save you from a trillion dollar company sending the fbi to bust down the door and steal everything you have. they will compel you to hand over any reported crypto holdings and throw you in prison if you refuse.

>they will compel you to hand over any reported crypto holdings and throw you in prison if you refuse.

Has this been tested in court? If your crypto is stored in a brainwallet, you can invoke fifth amendment rights to prevent that from being divulged.

IANAL, but the fifth amendment gives you a right against self-incrimination. It doesn't allow you to lie or refuse to answer questions about assets that are not part of any crime.

Edit: Civil asset forfeiture already runs afoul of the fifth, and no one seems to care:

> nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

>It doesn't allow you to lie or refuse to answer questions

"right to remain silent" is literally for that purpose. There are ways around it, if the government grants you immunity, but it's still far more onerous than freezing a bank account or invoking civil forefiture. Not to mention, disclosure of the key and/or wallet addresses may plausibly result in you incriminating yourself (eg. by proving that you bought drugs on silk road or whatever).

Hand over what? I lost it all in a boating accident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN_P39xI1ss

Too bad all transactions on the blockchain are public. Would be trivial to monitor the "lost" wallet for any future transactions.

Would be a shame if someone used Monero.

Cryptocurrency doesn’t free you from the law.

If he had kept the money in cryptocurrency then they’d just imprison him until it was turned over.

That's true, but at the same time let's not downplay the ways that self-custodial crypto may be a bulwark against authoritarian governments. I am not labelling Canada an authoritarian government by any means, but widespread self-custodial crypto would have made their response (freezing bank accounts) far harder to pull off.

But if you used Monero, they’d have a harder time proving what funds you may have access to.

Doesn't matter. If the FBI has records of you transferring money to an exchange and then you claim it just "disappeared" after reaching the exchange, they're going to roll their eyes.

The crimes in question involved real estate deals with paper trails. They also have transcripts of conversations where the partners acknowledge what they're doing is wrong and could potentially trigger an FBI investigation.

Monero won't save anyone from that.

Or you could just accidentally drop your laptop in the sea and then wait a decade or two before selling the Moneroj in another country?

The first part you can do with any cryptocurrency, the anonymity provided by Monero may allow you to succeed at the second.

There are several ways to get crypto (including Monero) without touching an exchange.

How this will probably play out:

FBI agent: What cryptocurrency assets do you own?

You: 2 BTC, 1 ETH.

FBI agent: We found some Monero transactions in your past, we think you're holding XMR and lying to an FBI agent about it. Off to jail for you.

>FBI agent: What cryptocurrency assets do you own?

>You: 2 BTC, 1 ETH.

bzzzt

You're supposed to remain silent, not expose yourself by lying.

John McAfee claimed they were doing this to him before he "suicided".

> we think

They need evidence

More specifically for a criminal case they’d need evidence beyond reasonable doubt, no?

How does cryptocurrency prevent the FBI from breaking down your door over allegations of 'depriving the company of [your] “honest services”'?

>How does cryptocurrency prevent the FBI from breaking down your door

The article is literally titled "The Day Amazon Sent the FBI to Take My Family’s Bank Accounts" (emphasis mine). I'd imagine the FBI would have a much harder time to seize someone's crypto wallet than freezing their bank accounts.

It gives you some recourse in this scenario from the fine article:

> After they knew we had no money to pay for legal representation [due to the asset seizure], Amazon’s lawyers sued my husband in federal court. If we can’t afford to defend ourselves, Amazon automatically wins.