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I was reading this question and @Mikaveli's answer regarding a list of things not to bring, including money.

So my question is, what if I bring my laptop across borders and its hard drive has a bitcoin wallet file containing more bitcoin (value-wise) than the maximum amount of currency allowed to bring across the border. Am I legally required to declare it?

What if that wallet file isn't on my laptop, but is stored in the cloud somewhere (setting aside the security risks of that)? Then I get to my destination and download the wallet onto my laptop (presumably deleting it before crossing another border) and maybe do some transactions (such as exchanging bitcoin for the local currency, or paying for things). Does that change the legality? If not, am I legally required to declare all bitcoin I own every time I cross a border?

What if I email the wallet file to a friend (highly trusted friend obviously) in the destination country before leaving? Then nothing except my knowledge of the password has crossed the border with me, though the wallet file did cross the border before me.

Finally, for all three cases (and especially the two where the file crosses the border at a different time than me), what if the wallet file is encrypted with a strong password that only I know? Does that change anything?

EDIT - For the purposes of this questions let's say I'm travelling from the US to France (or another Schengen Zone country)

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CPomerantz
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1 Answers1

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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.)

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