Carrying Bitcoin Internationally

8/20/2015 12:21:35 AM

At the moment, the general consensus is that Bitcoin is not a currency (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin, under ‘Economics’).

For the US and Canada, this page is pretty clear on what you need to declare when entering. Though a similar text for the UK explicitly states that the maximum amount refers to ‘currencies’, the US and Canada page refers to ‘cash like instruments’, which (though IANAL) could fit as a description of Bitcoin.

However, as a bitcoin wallet doesn’t hold any bitcoins itself (but your access details, so to speak) a seemingly sensible interpretation would be that moving wallets across borders is comparable to moving a credit card across borders; your credit card is not the money you can spend on it, it’s a tool to get access to the money.

(I Don’t see how encrypting your wallet, when moving it across borders, would have any relevance. Neither would it matter, in relation to having to declare the move of the wallet, whether you move the wallet yourself, or you mail it to a friend.)

This would leave actually spending sufficiently large amounts of money abroad. Just like physically taking large amounts into a country needs to be reported, and just like transferring large amounts of money by bank, the implication is that converting bitcoins into sufficiently costly tangible goods would need to be reported.

(IANAL, but this would also imply that converting enough of them in your home country would need to be reported.)

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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