Buying a $250 Residency Card From a Tropical Island Let Me Bypass U.S. Crypto Laws
U.S. traders are buying 'digital residency' in Palau to skirt restrictions on the amount of cryptocurrency they can withdraw and the exchanges they can use. Major exchanges have already banned the ID, fearing abuse.
The existence of everyday Palauans is threatened by climate change (sea level rise, coral reef death, heightened typhoon intensity), which is being accelerated by the energy use of proof-of-work coins. Sad to see the Palauan government sell out their own people
It's a bit strong to call it selling out. They are fucked already. Like their entire country will likely have to evacuate within the century. I'm not certain about this country but others are building a gov fund to help pay for that. Anything to help really. It's not like this is the thing that is going to really cement bitcoins. The ship has sailed.
I get what you're saying. But it undermines their efforts in other forums to try to fight climate change, if elites there are cashing in on carbon-heavy crypto, while everyday folks suffer from collapse of fisheries, saltwater intrusion into groundwater, etc
It's just grift all the way down with crypto, isn't it? Scams layered on scams layered on scams.
Yeaaaa
Yup. They have the exchange operators on record saying they actively trade against their customers. It's a club and if you're not in it you don't get to win.
I'd say you're right for 99% of it, but there is 1% that's genuinely useful.
That's probably a fair assessment, but still a rather damning indictment of the industry writ large.
There are definitely better versions of cryptocurrency that I think could be more useful, but the industry is definitely not headed in that direction. Instead, it's all pump-and-dumps, rug-pulls, and other schemes that render them nothing more than highly speculative asset classes in which the underlying asset has no intrinsic value.
More like 0.01
That us cheap. Many places charge ~$250K. But then you own a house and can sell it later...
The whole point of this card is basically to bypass KYC requirements for crypto exchanges that don't allow US customers. They are very explicit about this in their marketing.
That's for actual residency. This seems to be able to exist in the country digitally. Other countries, like Estonia, have the same thing.
It can technically be used to extend your stay in Palau long enough to establish tax residency since it would allow you to stay in Palau for longer than 183 days a year. Not unusual for people sitting on big crypto stashes to move abroad or buy citizenships in order to cash out their crypto without capital gains tax (or at least that's how it goes - I imagine the IRS doesn't go down that easily).
Ah, thank you.
Used to be the DOJ had an expansive view of USA sovereignty. Guess we will see.
And when you do that with Canada, you make a tidy profit!
Then again, if you can find a house anywhere in the country, with running water, for less than a mil, there's a gov analyst job waiting for you too!
Is well water fine? There are some nice but small houses in northern Alberta.
I look at real estate listings a lot to avoid doom scrolling.
Edit: Correction, west of line between Calgary and Edmonton.
