vey difficult unless you know something I don't know, what country would you be able to do so?
It's not very difficult if you have a visa/mastercard that uses
crypto on the back end. Then you can live a normal life in most countries. I know quite a few people in the UAE who live like this.
However, if you dont even want a visa/mastercard/union pay card, and reject the entirety of the banking system, then it is difficult. Still I know people who live like this, in Vietnam for example. They exchange
Bitcoin for
cash regularly using p2p, undergound OTC dealers etc, and then the economy is pretty cash based, so most things can be paid with cash.
but I can't provide a TIN (Tax identification number) because I have no
tax residency in this model, what then if the bank ask ?
TIN is (in some cases) requested upon opening , and regularly while having the account as part
KYC/AML checks.
Source of Funds is a different process, and doesn't really involve TIN - they want to know where your funds came from, not where you are a tax resident.
Also note that in the example above the UK personal accounts that you opened before leaving the UK would typically not ask for TIN, as you opened them as a UK resident. Also the UAE accounts would not ask for a TIN, because you opened them as a resident of the UAE and that means you are de facto treated as a tax resident of the UAE by UAE banks.
Most commonly banks treat residence as tax residence, because residence is way easier to check, and they are from a regulatory perspective not required to check tax residency (just at most collect a TIN). Checking tax residency involves checking center of vital interest / permanent abode, how many days you spent in various countries, if you have a key to a car in
Germany, a home in
Spain, are registered for a doctor in the Netherlands, have a child in Sweden etc. It doesn't make economic sense for banks to check this.
But anyway, you can provide a TIN in this model, you have a TIN from the UK, and you can get TINs from Ireland,
Mexico, and kind of from the UAE. And also I mentioned registering in Estonia, getting an Estonian TIN and then leaving Estonia. Then you could provide the valid Estonia TIN to for example
Revolut and they will accept it as that meets their criteria for KYC/AML checks.
And then Revolut would report to Estonia and (maybe to your passport country too), and then Estonia would do nothing with the information because they d see you no longer live there.
Maybe sometime in the future EU firms up things around this, and Revolut would get back to you saying they dont accept the Estonia TIN, but we are not there yet, and this might be far into the future, and there will always be ways around it.
You also have tons of people from developed countries that are not perpetual travellers, just regular people, who go and live in odd countries that dont issue TINs or are so corrupt that it doesnt really make a difference if they issue a TIN or not.
These people are still able to keep their bank accounts in the developed world, and typically just stay with the registration of their accounts in the
developed country of origin - no problem!
This would be the equivalent to a perpetual traveller in the previous example just keeping his/her UK bank accounts even after no longer being a tax resident in the UK.
