"Asset protection" has long been a strategy in cases of divorce across the United States. The word "asset protection" refers to the usage of a legal strategy so as to hide or shield assets from the Courts. Bitcoins, the relatively new internet currency, will most likely end up being the next frontier of asset protection.

In cases of divorce, asset protection may take many forms. Sophisticated asset protection techniques involve transferring money to an overseas account, the formation of legal entities (trusts, corporations, limited liability companies) along with other methods.

Probably the most unsophisticated and simple form of asset protection, and perhaps the most frequent in divorce cases, is simply holding money in the form of cash (i.e., in the home safe or in a bank safety deposit box). social media In this way, a person that is along the way of divorce believes that he can "protect" the cash from the divorce process. The divorcing spouse might keep the existence of the money secret from his spouse, divorce lawyer and Court, in order to avoid being ordered to share the cash with his spouse. This strategy may or may possibly not be successful, nonetheless it is surely not legal because it requires that the person misrepresent his assets to his spouse also to the Court.

A sophisticated divorce lawyer will know how to uncover hidden assets of the kind through the examination of financial records and other means of legal discovery. Bitcoin, however, has the potential to replace the hiding of cash as the most common form of asset protection in divorce cases. Given the structure of the bitcoin system and most divorce lawyers ignorance regarding bitcoins, it might become a a lot more successful method than hiding cash.

Bitcoin may be the digital currency that was created in 2009 2009 by the anonymous developer known the by pseudonym as Satoshi Nakamoto. It is a currency that exists only in digital form. All bitcoins and transactions are "registered" on the bitcoin block chain that's updated by bitcoin users rather than a centralized authority. The transactions, however, do not include names but rather the digital identification of every bitcoin. Bitcoin owners keep their bitcoins in a bitcoin wallet. The wallet is not necessarily a physical wallet, but rather various options for storing the digital identification of the bitcoin. The wallet might be kept on some type of computer, the server of a bitcoin wallet website, or even a piece of paper.

While is theoretically possible to trace the transfer of a bitcoin by examining the block chain, one will only discover the public identification key of the bitcoin as opposed to the name of the owner. If the wallet is continued a person's computer or on a website (where a party to a divorce registered his name) it is possible to discovery the existence of the bitcoins. However, wallets do not have to be of a name. Furthermore, if a person uses a "brainwallet" tracing a bitcoin to a particular person becomes almost impossible through any conventional method. A brainwallet is the usage of a memorized passphrase to be able to store a bitcoin.

The techniques for discovering hidden cash would be the first approach of any divorce lawyer for discovering a bitcoin asset protection plan. Unfortunately many, if not most, divorce lawyers and judges are unfamiliar with bitcoins and the truth that bitcoins can be used to hide assets. A divorce lawyer who doesn't understand bitcoins cannot possibly be likely to discover hidden bitcoin assets. Assuming you have any suspicion that your spouse might be hiding assets, make sure your lawyer understands the bitcoin system and how exactly to discover hidden bitcoin assets.