5mo ago

Buying a $250 Residency Card From a Tropical Island Let Me Bypass U.S. Crypto Laws

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5mo ago

Buying a $250 Residency Card From a Tropical Island Let Me Bypass U.S. Crypto Laws

www.404media.co /buying-a-250-residency-card-from-a-tropical-island-let-me-bypass-u-s-crypto-laws/

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5mo ago

Buying a $250 Residency Card From a Tropical Island Let Me Bypass U.S. Crypto Laws

www.404media.co /buying-a-250-residency-card-from-a-tropical-island-let-me-bypass-u-s-crypto-laws/

49 comments

It's just grift all the way down with crypto, isn't it? Scams layered on scams layered on scams.
- 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.
  
  Please elaborate on what this magical 1% that you feel is useful and worth expending the same amount if energy as Australia
  
  More like 0.01
- 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.
- Yeaaaa
- All money is a grift. Its nothing more thsn s way to bypass the value of bartered and traded commodities with real value. As so we can live in a class dictatorship where our surplus labor value is stolen so a few sociopaths can live in extreme opulent luxury at our expense
- Yeah that's why the Grifter in Chief is all over it.
- What do you think "decentralized currency" stands for? I was actually quite surprised my drug money was being used for purchase of legit goods at some point, but that didn't really last as regulated currency is far more reliable.
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
That us cheap. Many places charge ~$250K. But then you own a house and can sell it later...
- 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.
- 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.
I don't know who would benefit from interacting with this.
Going from a Kraken fee of 0.16% to a Binance fee of 0.075% after discounts (while assuming that depositing money one has in a bank account will still work well and that there is no risk from legal liability or of an account being closed) would let one recoup a $250 fee after trading a value of at least $294,117 ($250/((0.16-0.075)/100)). If one is Canadian and would otherwise have to suffer a 0.5% fee, one could recoup a USD 250 fee after trading a value of at least USD 58,823.
Someone that has about $300,000 in a bank account that wanted to use all of it to buy cryptocurrency would probably be able to afford to become a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis or Saint Lucia or even Malta, so Palau is probably not actually targeting rich people.
Someone that is making about $300,000 worth of trades but isn't rich is someone who trades a small value many times each year, and "the vast majority of day traders lose money". This suggests that, for most people, this will be the final meaningful purchase they make before their net worth declines rapidly. However, anyone that does end up profiting might be inclined to spend more money in Palau (whereas people who go broke won't even be able to afford to stay in Palau and so probably won't be able to cause problems in Palau), so Palau might end up profiting from people who lose money and people who gain money.
I happen to have been asked about this many months ago, since at least one person was visiting cryptocurrency meetup events in order to advertise this "residency card".

49 comments