Cash is only private if you never put it in a bank.

But if the reason for taking the payment is legitimate you're going to have no more problems with Bitcoin than you will with cash in this regard.

If your reason for taking the payment is illegal then I agree, Bitcoin puts you at some greater risk. But if that's you're point then perhaps you should be clearer. Bitcoin can be dangerous to use for criminals because it's more traceable. If your use is legal, it's no more or less dangerous than cash.

>But if the reason for taking the payment is legitimate you're going to have no more problems with Bitcoin than you will with cash in this regard.

Nope. You may deposit cash into a bank and explain where it came from. Sure.

This has no relevance to how you can later try to spend your bitcoin and have your transaction frozen + end up in a police investigation where you need to try to explain why chainalysis software says you are linked to terrorism, to people who have no understanding of it. This can be especially bad if you are not in a developed country. It simply means bitcoin is not usable as a "peer to peer cash" as it was intended. With cash you will not have such problem because it has no history permanently linked to it.

You're sort of right, but I don't think I'd any less terrified to have a surprise 1,000,000 dollars arrive in a parcel in my mailbox, than to have the same surprise in my bitcoin account.

That said, I'm not in the position where I have much to fear from the police/government. If I did, that would be different.

We'll have to just agree to disagree on this.

I don't believe that having bitcoin that was in the past involved in criminal use will cause you any problems at all. I'd be interested to see any evidence you have to the contrary.

Something I think people confuse is the concept of 'a bitcoin'. There is no thing that is transferred around like a physical coin or note. A bitcoin 'transfer' is just a change in the balance of two accounts, not an actual transfer of anything physical or digital. There is no change of ownership of anything.

Eh, I usually don't like comparing bitcoin to cash, but you can be inconvenienced with cash as well.

I had a roommate who had >$100K tied up into an online poker platform, which was frozen for months because the platform was doing some illegal activity.

That's not quite "cash"