Oddbean

#asknostr #bitcoin I tried posting on reddit and got perma banned immediately with no reason 🤦‍♂️ (word for word below): # Withdrawing Bitcoin Throwaway account. This is actually advice for a friend, but it is also interesting for me to learn from you too. Assuming that in the future, one wants to withdraw a large sum of money to pay off a mortgage in the UK, what is the best way to go about this. I personally have very little experience receiving fiat for bitcoin, but I do have experience buying bitcoin: - via Coinbase - via Bisq - via Robosats - via other centralised exchanges too. I have experienced being blocked by the bank, mostly when attempting to send to a centralised exchange, but also once when attempting to trade over bisq because they asked me what I was doing, I told them buying a custom gaming PC from a friend and they said I should use PayPal with better payment protection because they thought I was getting scammed. Maybe I should have told them what I was doing, but its a nark on the trading partner and it might cause further issues. I managed to move funds to another bank and complete the trade. But selling bitcoin and receiving large amounts of bitcoin, I wonder what issues people have had, if there are any advice on maximum amounts to avoid problems, timeframes etc. My go to advice is to use p2p, start withdrawing early, try weekly, bi-weekly or monthly and increase the amount you deposit to the bank each time. So maybe £3k, then £5k then £10k, then £20k, etc. Maybe banks won't freeze your account or screw with you if you withdraw from coinbase? Imagine the amount is around 200k gbp (I actually don't know how much, might be less). What is people's thoughts? You know... not financial advice, just for educational purposes.

I would look for a small local bank with limited surveillance resources or a ‘bitcoin friendly’ bank when they appear. Also I would never sell bitcoin to pay off a mortgage, maybe get a fiat loan using btc collateral and pay it off with that.

Good point with the bitcoin backed loan... well maybe not your point, but a loan may avoid red flags for the bank and you can pay with the bitcoin. I did a collateral loan in 2020 with Ledn.io and learned the hard way not to bank on price appreciation and expect that I couldn't be liquidated. It even felt like we were in the bull market when I did it. So just FYI be extra cautious with bitcoin backed loans, make sure you can pay them off partially (I could not) and have a solid plan for worst case scenario including 70% drop... but using to get cash and closing it with the collateral might be a good idea. I never know who is a bitcoin friendly bank, at least in the UK. I wish we knew heuristics to help us predict which actions (like depositing large sums) are going to flag your account and which are not. Other ideas: 1. Split the receipts across banks to reduce the total amount per account? 2. Call ahead to inform that you may receive a large sum. 3. Use a satellite bank account(s), not the current account or even the bank who manages your current account to receive funds to avoid inconveniences from shutdowns or freezes. Thanks btw ❤️ zapped. Lmk if you have thoughts on my thoughts.

Yeah def get multiple bank accounts if you can and spread your btc transactions. Although i found out my banks created a centralised AI surveillance entity where they collected all the transactions from my banks in one database. Horrifying and in flagrant violation of fundamental human rights imo. Maybe have a look at a Xapo bank account. They have been using bitcoin for over 10 years… Should be available in the UK. I can dm you a referral code if you like which can help you get onboarded there.

If you can pay off the mortgage with cash, selling F2F will pose some risk for new contacts, but will let you stack some paper useful to that purpose after you put in place a vetting procedure for prospective buyers. For example, you could require the buyer to have a video chat with you on jitsi, so you can check him out before actually meeting in person.