Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/economics/64492/the-end-of-money-cashless-society

by rwmj • 2 years ago

237 484 2 years ago

prospectmagazine.co.uk

I live an hour or so outside of Austin and people still primarily write checks as that's the only acceptable payment method, along with cash.

My new wife said, "Wait, why not just use Stripe? I'll tell them."

I had to explain to her that one does not simply pull forward a society thirty years into the future. There is an incredible amount of cultural inertia to overcome.

So I carry a lot of cash out here.

glimshe• 2 years ago

You'd be surprised. I visited South America and all I saw was phone payments... They basically skipped the credit card age, as cards were never popular among the poor.

ajmurmann3• 2 years ago

Aren't the phone payments backed by credit cards or do they by preloaded vouchers?

fundad2• 2 years ago

It’s not surprising that a lot Murica is decades behind most places in the world. Especially places where foreigners visit.

ghaff12• 2 years ago

I use very little cash in MA. But checks are still pretty much the default for a lot of people doing various services for me. I can just leave a check for someone like my housekeeper. I could presumably make arrangements to pay in a different form (including cash) but why bother? And, in many cases, it's my bank actually "writing" the check and delivering it.

I'd change if it became an aberration or weird to do but it's just not a problem in general. (And I wouldn't try to pay by check or cash at Walmart for example.)

rwmj5• 2 years ago

That's wild. Here in the UK, tradespeople usually have a card reader, or some accept bank transfers.

avianlyric• 2 years ago

The lack of fast free digital money transfer infrastructure in the U.S. is something that seems crazy to anyone in the EU.

Every EU country (and the UK) has had fast free digital bank transfers for decades now. Here in the UK we pay all “casual” services like cleaners, dog walkers etc via a simple, quick bank transfer. It’s great, I don’t need to keep cash, and person providing the services has the money in their account, ready to spend, about 500ms after I tap the “send” button on my phone.

I can see how cheques are convenient for purchasers, but for suppliers they’re a bit of nightmare, as they need physically deliver the cheque to cash it. Then wait for it to clear, and also take on all the risk of it bouncing. All of that just goes away with proper digital money transfer technologies.

alexwasserman• 2 years ago

In CT I use Venmo and Zelle to pay just about everyone. Cleaner, yard guy, electrician, plumber, handyman, etc

Everyone takes Zelle or Venmo.

gambiting• 2 years ago

Aren't cheques even worse for privacy though? Not only your bank knows exactly who you paid and how much, the seller also now has your actual name since it's just written on the cheque - at least when paying by card they get nothing.

Maybe I'm getting it wrong - cheques are something I've only seen in films, in my country no bank accepts them since 2020 anymore, they've been completely phased out.

ta1243• 2 years ago

I was given a chequebook when I opened my current bank account in 2004, I've written 8, all of them in the first 10 years.

grobbyy4• 2 years ago

Last I looked, checks had privacy regulations. Most other payment methods don't really. I'm also my bank's customer. For most payment companies, I'm the product.

jason-phillips3• 2 years ago

Here - that being outside of Austin in Texas - I think the root causes for this behavior lie with tax cheats and ineptitude.

PrimeMcFly8• 2 years ago

Checks certainly are not completely phased out in your country, just no longer common for consumers.

And shopkeepers can still take a name off a card.

chasd002• 2 years ago

I live an hour or so outside of Austin and people still primarily write checks

I can’t think of an area within 65 miles of downtown Austin where checks would be common. Which direction from Austin do you live? East maybe?

troupo• 2 years ago

I really really really like cashless payments

I really really really dislike that my money can be whisked away at the whim of a cray government or a glitch in the system

lotsofpulp2• 2 years ago

A government can reduce the purchasing power of cash too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis...

Or just issuing new money at a rate that exceeds demand for the money (meaning the relative desirability of the money, which relates to the trustworthiness of the community using the money and the economic productivity of the community using the money).

Like when the population pyramid starts turning upside down and the benefits promised to older people need to come into fruition from a smaller and smaller labor supply.

Edit to respond to 4bpp:

With cash, they can only do it to everybody at once or not at all.

I think government can use the new money to inflate the price of certain things quicker than others, effectively advantaging certain portions of the population, which is what I allude to in my 3rd paragraph.

For example, inflating asset prices lets those who own more assets (or certain assets) lose purchasing power more slowly than those who do not (see most labor sellers).

This is a somewhat related example of how a policy change for all can be designed to affect certain populations differently:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-hutchins-center-expla...

Use lower CPI to update tax brackets, and higher CPI to calculate Social Security benefits, i.e. increasing wealth redistribution from young to old without explicitly saying it.

fithisux2• 2 years ago

But with cash it cannot "disable" selectively

CPLX• 2 years ago

But not for you specifically.

4bpp• 2 years ago

With cash, they can only do it to everybody at once or not at all. With a number in a bank's database, they can selectively expropriate people based on any criterion with as little effort as between zero (in the case of tacit understanding) and a dozen (if they have to remind the banks that a tax audit is technically overdue or something) phone calls.

PrimeMcFly8• 2 years ago

Edit to respond to 4bpp:

Just respond to the actual comment next time.

berkes7• 2 years ago

I really really really would think that Bitcoin fills this exact need.

There's a lot wrong with the cryptocurrency world and with Bitcoin specifically. So much wrong, that I'm afraid we closed the one way out of government and corporate-controlled "digital money" and all the risks that comes with. But maybe it never was a good "way out" in the first place: maybe there never was a way out at all.

I keep hoping the grifters and scammers and marketeers move on to the next hypetrain (metaverse, ai) allowing the bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to be salvaged and become the way out again. But that hope is diminishing.

unicornmama3• 2 years ago

This is preposterous. Bitcoin is more traceable, more transparent and more censorship prone than every form of currency conveyance we know of including cash, diamonds, physical gold, etc… The fact that’s 2024 and some people still believe Bitcoin enables privacy just goes to show how crypto enthusiasts are candy brained fanatics.

asystole7• 2 years ago

Bitcoin is getting better all the time. There are more people focusing purely on payments in the bitcoin space than you think. The lightning network is halfway usable now, and federated mint type systems (like cashu[1]) are very promising.

[1] https://docs.cashu.space

reactordev• 2 years ago

But if the cray government(s) wanted to, they could prevent you from turning that BTC into fiat and vice versa.

amelius4• 2 years ago

The problem is that (2) goes away by just putting your head in the sand, while (1) is what you're confronted with no matter how much you try to not think about it.

xbmcuser2• 2 years ago

I personally started using digital payments once phone touchpay systems came out previously you had to take out cash or card from your wallet to pay so I would still use cash. But once phone payment became common just tapping your phone to pay had a lot less friction than taking out wallet and paying cash or by card.

ekianjo• 2 years ago

they will get you by convenience

fithisux2• 2 years ago

Clever boy

unsupp0rted• 2 years ago

Of course they will. Why shouldn’t they?

HumblyTossed• 2 years ago

Oddly, I’ve never been inconvenienced by my wallet.

ghaff12• 2 years ago

Yeah, I carry a small wallet and pretty much never use phone pay. I'm taking something out of my pocket in either case and there's never a question whether my credit card will work or not.

nickjj• 2 years ago

If a card supports tapping and you have 1 card in a thin wallet, could you tap your wallet in the same way you could tap your phone?

LordGrey• 2 years ago

I started using digital payments once I got an Apple Watch. Double-click a button on the side, tap the watch on the reader, I'm done. Very little friction and good security; it is really a no-brainer. Provided the reader accepts Apple Pay, that is....

mypastself2• 2 years ago

[On] 23rd August 1994, the chaotic music duo and performance artists Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty burned £1m of notes behind a boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura. They are not alone in attempting to reduce money’s power…

They literally increased the purchasing power of each remaining pound by doing so.

croes5• 2 years ago

They literally increased the purchasing power of each remaining pound by doing so.

Did they. Notes aren't a limited resource and they can still be considered in the cashflow

thaumasiotes6• 2 years ago

Assuming they (or someone else) owned the notes, yes. By reducing their own holdings, they raised the value of everyone else's.

If the notes were counterfeit or had otherwise managed to come into existence without being owned by anyone, then no.

huppeldepup• 2 years ago

There’s a documentary called “ watch the K foundation burn a million quid” well worth watching.

Towaway692• 2 years ago

Agreed because it's a very human docu. It's more about the human experiences of burning 1mil rather than prompting the act - which remains very controversial.

keiferski3• 2 years ago

By what, 0.00001%? I think the quoted sentence is obviously talking about the symbolic power of money – and burning a million pounds certainly has a lot of that.

api• 2 years ago

Good podcast about the KLF: https://thenonsensebazaar.com/listen/119-the-klf/

CraigJPerry3• 2 years ago

The Bank of England destroys between 10-30 billion pounds worth of notes per year (no longer fit for circulation). Sterling has other issuing banks too beyond BoE. I don’t think it’s possible to measure 1m notes going absent by any observable metric.

Even if it were possible, the purchasing power wouldn’t change - you coffee shop wouldn’t reduce their prices but they might adjust staffing levels in an extreme case (not remotely likely to happen with £1mm diff in circulation)

rich_sasha• 2 years ago

As a nitpick, presumably the banknotes destroyed by BoE are then replaced by other banknotes.

But I agree this is likely unmeasurable.

ttoinou3• 2 years ago

Correct, it's the rarety of all others bank notes that is increased, increasing purchasing power is only one consequence possible but not the only one.

By the way, being hard to measure doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And there are plenty of things easy to measure that are meaningless

hilbert422• 2 years ago

"The Bank of England destroys between 10-30 billion pounds worth of notes per year (no longer fit for circulation)."

The difference is that when BoE destroys notes they are accounted for by either the issuing of new notes and or crediting their withdrawal with a bank-entry credit thus the money in circulation does not change.

Burning notes willy nilly effectively reduces the amount of currency in circulation because the central bank thinks the money still in circulation and doesn't replace it. This is why in many countries defacing or destroying the currency is unlawful.

amelius4• 2 years ago

And the purchasing power of any pound still to be printed by the government.

hasty_pudding6• 2 years ago

This is just rich people flexing under the BS guise of sticking it to the man.

timruffles• 2 years ago

Not so - it was the majority of their music industry earnings, and they are apparently quite haunted by it to this day!

ascorbic• 2 years ago

It was their entire remaining royalty earnings. They also deleted their back catalogue so they couldn't earn any more. I remember having to buy Japanese imports when I wanted CD copies of the White Room and Chill Out as a teenager. It was only a couple of years ago when they finally reissued any of their work.

furyofantares• 2 years ago

You might argue they distributed the money amongst all existing money-havers, with each getting a microscopic share in proportion to how much money they already have. In that case it's a donation primarily to the rich.

But it's also no different than if they stuck it under a mattress for 10 years, at least until the 10 years is up. So that's also sort of a donation primarily to the rich.

Of course when the 10 years is up and they spend money, more of it will wind up in rich people's accounts than in anyone else's, if not immediately then eventually (otherwise they wouldn't stay rich.)

ProllyInfamous• 2 years ago

In that case it's a donation primarily to the rich.

[laughs, in disappearing bitcoin]

superkuh2• 2 years ago

I will always recall the chaos of being in a northern Minnesota tourist town (Ely) when the single fiber-optic line serving the region was cut. I sure was glad our group brought cash. All the people with only third party companies willing to pay for them some time in the future had their trips and plans ruined. But that's sort of a trivial example. It could be much worse.

And then there's the rent seeking inherent in any commercially provider payment service combined with enshittification. No single company payment system will remain "good" for long. Not that credit cards are good to start given the puritanism and censorship they impose. And that's not even mentioning the US state dept. control of those networks preventing donations to political groups like wikileaks.

Cash matters. Having some corporation promise to pay for your stuff 3 days in the future means giving up control. You might not care now, but you might care in the future when $localpolitics get dicey. Imagine not being able to pay for an abortion with $companypay because it's illegal in $company's legal place of operation.

Plus cash is just so much more convient and faster.

darrenf2• 2 years ago

Plus cash is just so much more convient and faster.

There are many reasons I'm not anti-cash, but I am really struggling to think of a single example of this specific statement being true. Just acquiring cash at all means I have to take time out of my day, repeatedly, to make withdrawals. Then I have to carry it securely (as well as the cards I need to get hold of more), which is annoying at the best of times and pretty much impossible when I'm out running, say. Handing cash to a merchant means they need to figure out change, and eventually I end up carrying a bunch of coins and they are even slower to spend than notes. Boarding buses was so much slower when each person paid in cash. Paying for a beer or meal needed the staff to take the money back to the till and return with change. When going abroad I need to use notes and coins I'm unfamiliar with. Honestly, when is cash faster?

ghaff12• 2 years ago

Yeah, I usually carry some cash in local currency. But I often end up with coins I can't be bothered to figure out or with a ziplock bag of currency I ultimately never end up using in a drawer at home. And, if I were really stuck in a place that unexpectedly required me to use cash for everything I almost certainly wouldn't have enough with me.

toenail3• 2 years ago

Honestly, when is cash faster?

Try to give a random person $100. Can they accept credit cards? Unlikely. Do they have the random cash app installed you use? Maybe. Do they have a bank account? Depends on where you live, and it could take days, and you have to bring long numbers with you and input them into your banking app.

Or simply turn off the internet.

mylastattempt• 2 years ago

I have to agree with this. Stating that cash is more convenient is just false. It might be more familiar to some, or more culturally accepted, but saying it's more convenient than just touching the machine with your card or phone - outright false.

That's all completely separate from the fact that cashless payments shift immensely shifts the power balance and takes away all of your payment privacy - irreversibly.

MSFT_Edging• 2 years ago

Cash is faster in situations where you tip. You don't need exact change, just cost of service + tip and you can walk away.

I still love using cash in restaurants because the credit card dance adds 10 minutes waiting at an empty table. The server always drops off the check and runs, as if I'll need to think about the 43 dollar bill, getting them back is a whole thing, then waiting for them to return with my card and 3 receipts I don't want is another.

Since I'm in the states, i'm already tipping. I put down a few bills and go about my way. Same for things like pizza delivery, why pay part on credit then tip at the door(because basically no company gives the e-tips to the driver, you're just donating money to the company at that point).

falcor84• 2 years ago

Plus cash is just so much more convient and faster.

You mentioned "puritanism and censorship" as your main issue with cards (and I assume with other digital payment systems), but to the best of my knowledge that's only an issue with online payments, for which cash isn't really possible at all. Unless you feel that sending bills in an envelope to some postal address you see on a website to be fast and convenient.

superkuh2• 2 years ago

When I pay with cash the transaction is settled in literally 15 seconds. When I pay with a card it takes days, involves dozens of people and many capital and mantainance heavy systems which are extremely fragile. Additionally the digital payment services provider will take their relatively large cut so the process of the transaction can drag out over even longer times and greater costs. With cash you pay only the cost and tax and you need not ever think of it again.

The experience of using cash is very simple, fast, and reliable. In the future digital payment systems may become those things but unless you're in an urban area they currently are not. Your experience of using digital payment systems in person in, say, a coastal megalopolis differs significantly from using it to buy a shovel at a hardware store in a small town. At best (with credit or debit cards) it's almost as convient as cash, most of the time.

If I want to exchange value with another human person cash makes it easy and simple. It is far from easy with digital systems involving arbitrary third party corporate persons.

As for online stuff I mostly use bitcoin.

madsbuch7• 2 years ago

I Denmark we are removing the 1000kr bill as of May 2025. from then on the highest bill. is 500kr which is roughly equal to 80 usd.

Denmark Is the most cashless society I have yet experiences (and I have been traveling a fair bit).

This comes with pros and cons. and I think the reason why it works is because of an incredibly high social trust.

FirmwareBurner• 2 years ago

Besides high social trust, I assume also a great IT infrastructure with guaranteed high uptime, a tech literate population willing to adopt new technology and not be stubborn to change, plus a small business environment not focused on cash driven tax dodging, like in the German speaking countries.

madsbuch7• 2 years ago

yep, especially because a lot of people use debit cards that only work when online.

and yes, even on small markets merchants charge with a handheld terminal.

forinti3• 2 years ago

I live in a middle-income country and it's now not unusual to see beggars with card machines at the red light.

Philpax• 2 years ago

I moved to Sweden ~2.5 years ago and I can count the number of times I've used cash on one hand.

It's definitely less private, but the convenience is unmatched. Honestly, I don't even know what the modern Swedish notes look like now!

croes5• 2 years ago

Sweden also has pretty public tax income records.

ACow_Adonis• 2 years ago

Lol, I actually experienced something similar in Australia recently trying to sell second hand goods.

Of course I asked for payment in cash, which the buyers duelly provided.

But it occurred to me as I observed the new $50 notes in my hand, which were of a new design that I'd never seen before that it had actually been so long since i'd handled physical currency that I wasn't really sure whether the notes in my hand were legitimate designs or not.

caeril2• 2 years ago

but the convenience is unmatched

I've actually timed this.

It takes ~8 seconds to fish out the card, insert it, wait for approval, and replace it in the wallet. Roughly similar time frame for unlocking your phone and approving the NFC transaction.

It takes ~15 seconds to fish out a C-note, insert it into the self-checkout bill accepter, retrieve the change, and put the change into my wallet.

Delta of 7 seconds.

Let's say you're a typical tech worker, and your time is worth on the order of $120/hr. 7 seconds is 23 cents to you.

Let's further assume you just paid 23 cents to buy $80 worth of groceries as a non-convenience fee so the data brokers and/or the Feds don't know your precise shopping habits.

You just paid a 0.3% "transaction fee" for your privacy. The Visa network takes on the order of 2+% to DESTROY your privacy. You're getting a really raw deal here, by choosing this "convenience".

yaky4• 2 years ago

In the US, we have $100 and $50 bills officially in circulation, but many places will refuse to take them as payment, even though they will take smaller denominations. I believe this is usually described as avoiding counterfeit money and/or not keeping more than a certain amount of cash in the register.

dazc7• 2 years ago

In the UK we have £50 notes which are notoriously difficult to use as cash since there are many counterfeits in circulation and it's hard to differentiate between genuine and fake. We also have notes issued by Scottish banks which are legal tender throughout the UK but good luck finding a retailer outside of Scotland willing to accept them.

forinti3• 2 years ago

I have a hard time getting change, because in my country ATMs like to spit out large denominations. But for my daily activities (the bus, really) I need change. In the cases where I would need a large bill I use credit cards.

The highest denomination in my country is worth about US$40, but that is a large amount of money. Yesterday I payed for lunch for 4 with about half that.

So I wish the larger denominations would just go away.

ghaff12• 2 years ago

On the rare occasions I use them--mostly when traveling--I've noticed some ATMs offering a choice of denominations. But it was certainly true historically that ATMs tended to spit out bills in denominations that were at least at the high end of what people used for day to day transactions.

ChrisMarshallNY4• 2 years ago

high social trust.

With the rise of ML, and people salivating over the data inherent in currency flow, I suspect that trust may soon go the way of the dodo.

In the US, anything that makes money tends to get helped along. Regulators look the other way (until some knucklehead starts stealing from rich people), and even the lowest-level employees become "stans" of their bosses.

I am a believer in the promise of socialism, but, like communism, it's something that works on paper, but people screw it up.

Capitalism works. It does that, because it is completely in line with human behavior. Human behavior is pretty awful, when we don't have external restraints, so unrestrained capitalism is pretty awful.

Despite that cynical stance, I do have hope for the future. It will almost certainly make me uncomfortable, when it comes (as my own generation did, for my predecessors), but I think we'll prevail.

madsbuch7• 2 years ago

it is dangerous to assume that the US culture is the default culture.

social trust is not a new thing in Scandinavia. it has been a part of the society for centuries.

Denmark is arguably also more capitalistic than the US. the median wealth is almost double that of the US. hence the Danish system, despite some of the world's highest taxes, easier allow people to build wealth.

PrimeMcFly8• 2 years ago

I am a believer in the promise of socialism, but, like communism, it's something that works on paper, but people screw it up.

The premise itself is screwy because it doesn't account for human nature.

xenator• 2 years ago

I have visited Denmark and this is definitely last country I want to live. Just simple the worst. I've lived and visited about 40-50 countries in my life, maybe more, it is hard to count.

For me Denmark is best example of modern slavery with brainwashed slaves. I was born in USSR and current Denmark looks very similar. The values of society are too far from what I respect.

I believe if this work in Denmark all other countries should avoid it with all costs.

kredd• 2 years ago

It’s literally the first time I’ve heard anyone saying this about Denmark. I’ve been to a ton of places, including Denmark, and can’t even understand why would you have such opinion. Care to explain?

alkonaut5• 2 years ago

That’s a three paragraph rant but provides zero examples about what values it is you object to.

ACS_Solver5• 2 years ago

I'm in Sweden, a strong contender for the most cashless country, and I don't know what the banknotes look like. They were changed some 5 or 6 years ago and I haven't paid with or even withdrawn cash since then. For illustration, cash is generally not accepted outside of grocery stores and some chains. For a typical restaurant, coffee shop or takeaway there's very little chance they take cash. Street vendors may take cash but will definitely have a proper cashless payment method.

I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country. I'm also very concerned about privacy, I'm that sort of HN person - never had a Facebook account, run self-hosted email for 20 years, use Signal for messaging as much as I can, etc. But I don't think cash is a good solution to privacy. I'd rather see laws and (better) cryptocurrencies as the privacy toolkit.

One common concern I see from US-centric articles is about your transaction history being sold for ad targeting, etc. That at least is illegal here. A store is not allowed to track your history of purchases or similar unless you opt in, such as via a store loyalty card. Banks are not allowed to disclose anything about your accounts except in some investigatory contexts, but definitely not for commercial purposes. So neither "the store will track my purchases because I pay by card" nor "the bank will sell my history to advertisers", which would be major issues for me, are actual concerns.

coldtea7• 2 years ago

I'm also very concerned about privacy, I'm that sort of HN person - never had a Facebook account, run self-hosted email for 20 years, use Signal for messaging as much as I can, etc. But I don't think cash is a good solution to privacy. I'd rather see laws and (better) cryptocurrencies as the privacy toolkit.

We wont see those. Instead we'll see more enchroachment of privacy - because cash was actually the solution: existing for millenia, trusted, no transaction fees, no monitoring of purchases, non remotely invalidated, not requiring fancy technology to use, works from buying a car to getting some help as a beggar on the streets.

That at least is illegal here.

Would that ever stopped companies pulling that shit?

_xivi6• 2 years ago

I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country.

What would you do in case of a emergency or natural distaster? Basically a situation where any of the following is not available for any period of time: power, network, financial infrastructure, access to digital devices.

1. On personal level: Maybe your wallet and phone was stolen

2. Region: Power/Network is down

3. National level: the whole infrastructure is down or under attack

Have you been in such situation or thought about it?

belorn• 2 years ago

I share to a large degree this viewpoint that I'd rather see laws and better technology as a solution to the ever connected and tracked future that we live in. I try to use cash in Sweden since we don't have those laws yet, but replacing paper, metal and cashiers would be good if the drawbacks could be resolved.

The laws we already have do not work. A large part of Swedish intelligence policy is to trade information with partners like the US, and I would consider it extremely unlikely that highly valuable data like bank transactions was not part of that. The US intelligence policy in turn is known to use such information occasionally for commercial purposes, when it has a national impact.

The Swedish courts are also not trained to deal with low-value evidence data. There is an assumption that if data exists, it must do so because there was a reason someone deemed it worth gathering. This assumption breaks apart when data is always collected as a default, which means courts would need to be retrained when this kind of data is presented as evidence (we are slowly getting there but still very far from where I would feel safe). It also makes investigatory contexts dangerous, especially if records are part of fishing operations where single bit errors in storing, retrieving, copying and relaying records can have extreme effects. This include swish which records are very common in court hearings. In some cases it seems that only a single swish record is enough for someone to get charged with a crime, with the accused having to provide evidence to prove that they are innocent.

standardUser• 2 years ago

I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country.

That's fine for you but some of us need to buy illegal drugs.

sneak2• 2 years ago

This is the same Sweden that issued a bogus arrest warrant for Assange?

If you think they won’t point and click seize your assets and freeze your accounts prior to trial for publishing the wrong thing, you’re crazy.

Cash is the backup, and must be preserved. Electronic payments can be centrally censored.

varjag3• 2 years ago

Traveling from Norway 10-15 years ago Denmark was fairly backwards when it came to electronic payments.

slau2• 2 years ago

10-15 years is also an insanely large amount of time when it comes to digitalisation.

15 years ago IE6 received its final stable release, but it would still go on to be supported for another 8 years. That’s also the same year Chrome was released, but it would take another 4 years before it overtook IE in market share.

I used cash semi regularly when I moved to Denmark nearly 10 years ago. I haven’t touched Danish currency in the last 3-4 years.

wiredfool• 2 years ago

My eldest has gone off to uni in Scotland this year, and he’s literally spent no cash at all in his time there. The only cash he uses are 1 pound coins for the gym lockers, and they return when you’re done.

He spent 3 months in Germany last year, and used cash for just about everything.

GordonS• 2 years ago

Scot here! Especially since the advent of Apple and Google Pay, more and more people use cashless payments - with our phones always on our person these days, it's very convenient.

There are still some holdouts though - it's only recently I've started to see taxis that routinely accept card payments, and without a ludicrous extra processing fee.

I've travelled a lot, and I'd say Norway, Sweden and Denmark are all way ahead of Scotland in terms of cashless.

PrimeMcFly8• 2 years ago

Just as there are checks and balances against a prime minister becoming a dictator, there should be checks and balances against a state abusing a digital currency.

Removing cash makes that hard.

fsckboy• 2 years ago

how do cashless transactions require social trust? you trust your bank, I trust my bank, and we don't have to trust each other at all. if you can't trust your bank, you are SOL.

madsbuch7• 2 years ago

You trust that your spending habits are not shared with malicious actors. You trust that the government does use your data maliciously. You trust there is a fair dispute process, etc.

There are plenty of countries where I would not dare to register certain spends on my card or where the risk of using cards would be considered high.

charcircuit3• 2 years ago

It's strange that governments are not minting more digital currency if the demand for physical currency is falling.

rwmj5• 2 years ago

Because it doesn't solve any problem that anyone has? Bank transfers and card payments are easy, fast and already widespread, at least everywhere except for the US.

charcircuit3• 2 years ago

Is printing tons of physical money solving problems people actually have either or is it just increasing costs from having to manufacture, transport, secure, etc physical money.

pxmpxm• 2 years ago

Tell me you're a bitcoin guy that's never taken a single Macro class without telling me...

Government prerogative is to create currency ex-nihilo; there's no need waste a bunch of energy in that process.

charcircuit3• 2 years ago

A money printer doesn't just magically create money out of thin air. Printing it as a cryptocurrency would use less energy than printing it physically. Alternatively the government could just edit a bank account it already has and just increase its balance.

imtringued• 2 years ago

When you deposit money at a commercial bank, and they send the excess cash to the central bank, they do get central bank reserves.

However, that doesn't mean it happens routinely. Most banks probably just send the cash between one another, decided via a clearing house with no central bank middle man. I am only describing the cash handling process here by the way. 99% of the business still operates based on electronic reserves.

ianburrell3• 2 years ago

The government doesn’t care about cash. They make a little money printing it. But are much more concerned about the state of the economy and don’t care how people are paying for things.

pythonbase• 2 years ago

Pakistan is still a cash based economy, many outlet either deny card payments or apply a processing fee to encourage cash transactions.

"State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) data indicates that the Cash in Circulation (CinC) has increased to Rs9. 2 trillion ($32 billion) at the end of June 2023, which is equivalent to 30 per cent of the total money supply (M2), or around 11pc of the national GDP." [0]

0: https://www.dawn.com/news/1779399

xbmcuser2• 2 years ago

If you take white economy and black economy its maybe 50:50 in Pakistan hence the we are still using mostly cash. Most of the rich and the ruling class are rich because of illegal/untaxed wealth so its not in their interests to get a digital payment system. Where as the taxes are so high that the rest prefer not to use digital systems either. I don't know if its still the case but 15-20 years ago post dated cheques used to go from company to company without being deposited into the bank as it was an easier way to transport large amounts without it getting officially documented. Even the most used digital systems in Pakistan have so far been of moving cash from 1 place to another. Like you deposit money in 1 shop and it is paid cash to your family in another shop. Either the shop pay 17% sales tax by getting payment through credit card or takes a cash payment and hide the sale

toenail3• 2 years ago

I don't see why I should give a corporation information about all my payments. I already carry a phone with me, that's enough to spy on where I am, they don't need to know what I do or who I do it with. Privacy is a right, not a privilege, I don't see why I should just throw it away for a little convenience.

okr• 2 years ago

(Since when is privacy a right? Just curious. I always saw it as a privilege. Having my room with my bed to sleep in.)

ThunderSizzle• 2 years ago

Since SCOTUS hallucinated it into being to make their pro-abortion ruling in Roe v Wade. It's the only time I've seen the right to privacy taken to the extreme.

baq2• 2 years ago

If it’s written in the law then it is. Depends where you live.

Freak_NL• 2 years ago

It's fairly common:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy

Over 150 national constitutions mention the right to privacy.

Not the US, but:

In the US, privacy and associated rights have been determined via court cases and the protections have been established through laws.

Privacy is not a privilege, it is a right.

mdp20215• 2 years ago

There exist natural rights. It is not frequent to find, say, a "right to breathe" or a "right to walk" as an explicit topic, because the absence of its object has critical implications.

Same for the "right" to privacy. It is something that would be strongly defended because its absence would not be accepted.

impossiblefork3• 2 years ago

I think what's required is electronic cash, something like a CBDC with an electronically transferable, partially anonymous system that still allows offline payments if case the central computers get knocked out.

GNU Taler satisfies one half of these constraints (cashlikeness + taxability). The Swedish e-krona pilot also has a token based component to allow offline payments.

asystole7• 2 years ago

We already have this. It's called bitcoin. For offline payments, there's physical devices like opendime and potentially Chaumian mints like cashu.

impossiblefork3• 2 years ago

I think the advantage here is that it's ordinary money, which if people fail to obtain it, will lead to them defaulting on their debt and losing real things.

When you have enormous amounts of debts denominated in a currency, so many time the price of those things that would be lost, its value is almost entirely determined on what interest rate the central bank sets. If you hoard it to get people to default so as to obtain the value of the collateral, the central bank will printing to stop you.

Meanwhile, there's no point in trying to do that kind of thing with bitcoin. The value of the collateral is probably less than the value of the physical cash. What you do then is to invent your own bitcoin and hope that somebody will accept units of it.

For this reason I believe that the fair value of Bitcoin is zero, but I can't know when it ends up at zero, so I'm not shorting it, just as I am not shorting the US real estate market, even though it's clear that from a discounted-cash-flow PoV it must be incredibly overvalued, provided that it wasn't incredibly undervalued back when interest rates were at 1%.

arthur_sav3• 2 years ago

Lets be honest, bitcoin is not usable for every day transactions.

vlovich1234• 2 years ago

opendime is a one time use bearer bond that costs ~$10 per device. It cannot be used like cash - you have to transfer the full amount - and it can break much more easily than cash.

cashu is still online and its anonymity claims should be taken as suspect given that no cryptocurrency has managed to achieve it in practice.

So to summarize: Bitcoin only really works online, offline equivalents are more fragile and can’t be used for the same use cases as cash, and anonymity continues to lag physical cash.

Fbnkigffb66tfbj• 2 years ago

I can't imagine any major government would willing give its citizens anonymity when they have such a perfect excuse for ratcheting up surveillance with a database of our entire financial lives.

impossiblefork3• 2 years ago

We're actually (i.e. here in Sweden) having big pre-proposal investigation to determine what can be done to keep cash available, for reasons of anonymity and security against, let's Russian interference with banks or fibre cables.

But I prefer an electronic solution and do not want physical cash. This is of course a slightly risky view, but I believe that it can save us huge amounts of money and strengthen our economy.

Alifatisk9• 2 years ago

I believe once we go fully cashless, we'll regret it and wish we could go back.

I can barely enjoy a full day without being required to bring my phone / debit card with me because the register does not accept cash.

IshKebab4• 2 years ago

I can barely enjoy a full day without being required to bring cash because the vendor does not accept card.

(Not actually true since basically everyone accepts card in the UK, but it illustrates that your point makes no sense.)

coldtea7• 2 years ago

With cash being the default for thousands of years of history and everything, and card meaning card fees, tracking, tied to a bank, and so on, it totally makes sense.

Alifatisk9• 2 years ago

Not actually true since basically everyone accepts card in the UK, but it illustrates that your point makes no sense

So you tried to prove me wrong by giving a made up example?

isodev• 2 years ago

Who knows, maybe this is the good timeline and "money goes the way of the dinosaurs" so we get to enjoy a Star Trek-like future.

coldtea7• 2 years ago

Change Star Trek to Soylent Green or Elysium and you're closer.

Xplune13• 2 years ago

That's a new one. Genuine question, why do you prefer using cash instead of using a phone or card?

rhdunn• 2 years ago

Cash is useful in cases where your phone/card isn't working. E.g. if your phone has run out of battery, you are in a location that has a poor signal, your account has been locked due to a suspicious/unusual transaction (even if legitimate), etc.

You don't need it all the time, just for emergencies.

mdp20215• 2 years ago

Transactions through credit cards and similar are not anonymous. Having third parties track your daily activities is beyond dystopian.

coldtea7• 2 years ago

Not new at all. Many people feel that way. Lots of good arguments too.

346794• 2 years ago

Cash is free and easy. Electronic payments add cost and complexity that sometimes results in failure.

Alifatisk9• 2 years ago

Sometimes I don’t want to walk around with my valuables on me, I just bring a small sum enough to satisfy my groceries.

I do this especially when it’s dark outside and I have to go out to shop, this way, I don’t lose anything significant if I get robbed.

Another good reason is that some shops have to pay a fee for being able to accept digital transactions, for some shops, the fee is quite a lot. So paying with cash is preferred and helps them a bit.

Lastly, while it sounds shady, being able to pay in cash keeps me from being traced by the government. I don’t really have anything to hide but having the option to be anonymous If I want feels good.

aleph_minus_one2• 2 years ago

I can barely enjoy a full day without being required to bring my phone / debit card with me because the register does not accept cash.

Buy somewhere else (if humanly possible), and tell this to the vendor who doesn't want to accept cash.

cge• 2 years ago

This is increasingly difficult, at least in Western Europe, without it being a significant imposition. I've had several instances where, despite absolutely no signage or indication anywhere outside the business, inside the business, or on the menu, I've waited in a queue, ordered something, and only when I'm ready to pay been told that the, eg, coffee shop won't accept cash. I've also been to several restaurants, especially in London, where despite officially accepting cash, attempting to pay in cash will result in the staff returning and asking you not to if at all possible: it appears that the staff at those restaurants are not actually allowed to handle cash payments themselves, and have to have management handle them directly.

While it's not clear that these behaviours are legal, it does not appear that there is any enforcement.

arthur_sav3• 2 years ago

It's not vendors but governments that are pushing for this.

Our_Benefactors2• 2 years ago

Currently in China which is pretty much fully cashless and I fucking hate it.

Get Alipay. Link your credit card. Put in a pin, but no not that pin because it has two consecutive numbers. Pick a different pin. Forget it by the time you need to pay and reset your pin. Go to the grocery store and have to download a new app to pay, they can’t take Alipay even though it’s the same parent company. Oh the machine didn’t work, so pull your phone out again to scan. And the endless additional services you need to sign up for to avoid price discrimination upwards of 200%.

It’s a nightmare. Japan has it right, keeping with a cash based society.

rwmj5• 2 years ago

When I was visiting China in 2019 it was just about still possible to use cash, but it was obvious the way things were going. As a visitor I wasn't able to use any of the available cashless payment methods (no bank account, for a start), so I don't know how visitors and tourists will cope.

okasaki• 2 years ago

Okay, but somehow the rest of the billion people manage it?

jasode3• 2 years ago

I can barely enjoy a full day without being required to bring my phone / debit card with me because the register does not accept cash.

But how do you get a regular re-supply of your cash to pay the places that take cash?

For me, I would have to make a regular trips to the bank ATM machine to withdraw cash. That type of errand is inconvenient which is why I haven't done that in 15 years. It's been so long that I don't even know what my secret PIN code is to withdraw cash. I pay for everything by credit-card.

I can see where bringing a debit card can be inconvenient but the alternative of ATM withdrawals is inconvenient too (and also vulnerable to physical loss/theft).

davemp• 2 years ago

Don’t most bank reimburse atm fees? I just keep my cash topped off whenever I go to the grocery. It’s a lot more convenient to pull out my wallet than to look people up on vemno/zelle imo.

ghaff12• 2 years ago

Be glad there are ATMs. I'm old enough to remember getting cash involved checks and bank tellers--assuming you had an account with a local bank because otherwise it was more complicated.

carlosjobim• 2 years ago

How horrible, a slight inconvenience!

I mean, sorry for the sass, but when did it become acceptable to base an argument on slight inconveniences? Being alive is slightly inconvenient most of the time.

grobbyy4• 2 years ago

Take out $10k every few years....

fullspectrumdev2• 2 years ago

All my in person transactions are done with cash where possible. It is not inconvenient at all.

I withdraw a sum of cash at the beginning of each month at the bank.

I carry maybe ~150 euros whenever I’m out doing stuff.

What’s interesting is I spend less this way - and preserve my privacy.

giantg2• 2 years ago

"I believe once we go fully cashless, we'll regret it and wish we could go back."

The major stores would be a problem, but on an individual basis I would bet many people would switch to silver or gold if cash were truly eliminated.

PikachuEXE• 2 years ago

Benjamin Franklin — 'Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.'

Same for convenience

What liberty? The ability to make transactions without a centralized and/or permissioned finance system

amelius4• 2 years ago

On the other hand, if you're living in a street with lots of criminal activity and money laundry operations, maybe you think differently about it.

el-salvador2• 2 years ago

This has happened to me while living and travelling in the Northern Triangle of Central America in the 2010s which at that time were the unsafest not-at-war countries of the world.

Depending on the time of the day and location I just ran errands with only the smallest amount of cash needed and an old phone. And sometimes I kept an emergency $1 bill to pay the bus in my socks . If I was robbed, the most they could get from me was the small cash I had on hand.

As money became electronic, organized crime changed tactics, and instead of only taking money from victims, they'd take the victims to ATMs to withdraw all their funds. Banks then reacted by limiting withdrawals at about $300 in ATMs depending on the risk of the area.

Kiro• 2 years ago

I doubt it. The Nordics have been cashless for a long time and the personal inconvenience in the transition was essentially none. It went by pretty much unnoticed and I don't think many people miss cash or wants to go back.

Now I am against a cashless society for other reasons, mainly ideological, but claiming it's less convenient feels odd.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

The nordics will not always be a democracy (same for every country/people), then they will regret it. That may be 10 years from now or 200 years from now.

Alifatisk9• 2 years ago

It went by pretty much unnoticed and I don't think many people miss cash or want to go back.

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard elderly people complain about vendors not accepting cash anymore.

keiferski3• 2 years ago

Obligatory Neuromancer (1984) reference:

His total assets were quickly converted to New Yen, a fat sheaf of the old paper currency that circulated endlessly through the closed circuit of the world's black markets like the seashells of the Trobriand islanders. It was difficult to transact legitimate business with cash in the Sprawl; in Japan, it was already illegal.

I am fairly convinced that using cash will slowly be labeled as a "criminal" activity and gradually shamed into non-use by regular people.

toenail3• 2 years ago

I am fairly convinced that using cash will slowly be labeled as a "criminal" activity and gradually shamed into non-use by regular people.

Of course. The only people who need cash are criminals and terrorists. Now move along citizen.

generic92034• 2 years ago

That would not work at all in many countries. There are some with a strong attachment to cash.

keiferski3• 2 years ago

Sorry, my comment was too vaguely written, but I meant to imply that it won't be the government that does this, but regular people enforcing social norms.

"We aren't the kind of people that use cash," and so forth.

mdp20215• 2 years ago

The only people who

There have been political groups spreading and promoting exactly that concept.

"Thieves and junkies", they say. Forgetting completely "people with dignity" - also because that image is fading from aggregate memory.

casperc• 2 years ago

Well to be fair, in my country (Denmark), that is mostly the case. For normal purchases, using cash is very much not the norm.

But paying a carpenter, cleaner or similar, who will give a lower rate (and not pay income tax and VAT), that is very much the norm (though socially frowned upon). Also drugs I guess.

rjblackman• 2 years ago

demand for bitcoin will keep climbing.

_xivi6• 2 years ago

I think the ongoing banking crisis in Lebanon (similarly in Egypt and maybe elsewhere too) where there are restrictions on people's access to their deposits or making international transactions should be on everyone's mind when talking about eliminating cash.

The downside of going cashless aren't hypothetical or as far-fetched as people think. The whole society can be put on hold overnight. We can see this happening in front of us.

Using whatever payment method for convenience in itself is fine. But, eliminating cash as medium, without providing a better alternative, one that can still work in disasters where power or network is down, is wild.

xadhominemx13• 2 years ago

What difference does the elimination of paper money at POS make to ability to access electronic deposits? Unless you are saying people should not bank at all and keep cash under the mattress?

_xivi6• 2 years ago

What difference does the elimination of paper money at POS make to ability to access electronic deposits?

The difference it makes is that now you only have one way to access your savings. Any failures, technical issues, outage, etc. and you're out of luck to say the least.

The principle is that you shouldn't rely on a single system ever. If you're eager to go that way be my guest. I was using a real life scenario of how that turned out bad for people.

I don't care about paper vs electronic. I care about relying on a single point of failure.

nonrandomstring10• 2 years ago

There are two fallacies I frequently feel the need to debunk in this discussion.

- Cash is anonymous

- Cash is an "old" or "low" technology.

When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines.

Modern cash is high technology. Look at a UK or European note already. Holograms, nano-technology, advanced materials science... It's well past the point of being worth forging, and it is likely that future banknotes will use einks, embedded printable passive electronics to do all of the things people hope or fear of purely digital cash, such as time-out, store variable value, and be more traceable.

The function cash really performs is a resilience buffer for person to person transactions that works independently of electrical power and Internet. Smart people at the top are never going to let that slide, because it would be national security suicide and practically inviting civil unrest.

Cash, in evolving forms is here to stay, but it may not have all the properties we think it has and defend it for.

coldtea7• 2 years ago

When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines.

Which is neither here, not there. Cash is effectively anonymous for 99% of uses that don't involve "major crime". Your buying something is not logged anywhere, for example.

nonrandomstring10• 2 years ago

Which is neither here, not there. Cash is effectively anonymous for 99% of uses that don't involve "major crime".

Exactly. Almost all cash transactions remain anonymous because there's no criminal investigation involved.

Most people are honest and just going about their business with friends and family.

That's how it should be.

A cost bar for tracing is a desirable feature for non-authoritarian societies.

Digital currency mediated by bank apps, active cards, smartphones or whatever, makes for "convenience" but also zero cost to spy on people who are not criminals. And that's a problem.

So maybe it is here. Or there. I'm not sure where you're standing :)

grobbyy4• 2 years ago

You fell for a simple fallecy. The line isn't that cash is used in a major crime. It's that someone in power wants someone in prison.

1. You might not be involved in a major crime but you might be a suspect. Lots of innocent suspects get convicted.

2. You might be a whistleblower. Lots of whistleblowers get framed.

Etc.

"If I've done nothing wrong I have nothing to hide" didn't work out well for Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.

A lot of the reason many of us want privacy preserved is to prevent a similar path here. Totalitarian governments don't always pop up overnight on a revolution; they often creep up on you.

The creeping process is also often:

1. We'll track X with major checks on privacy; it will only be used for terrorism and child abuse investigations and held in a secure vault

2. We're just doing a better job of sharing / using data we already collect

Neither off those is objectionable, but together, you end up in a distopia.

hasty_pudding6• 2 years ago

Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked

Is this true? When I buy something from my local gas station is there a system in place tracking every serial number exchanged on the cash?

346794• 2 years ago

Not in the US. There are no laws requiring businesses to do so. Why would employers spend the resources required for such a thing?

mdp20215• 2 years ago

anonymous ... you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash

That is not the point. The point is in the contract - e.g., that you are not accepting to untick a "do not track" flag. That circumvention is always possible is not what matters there.

Fredkin• 2 years ago

Smart people at the top...

Who exactly? Where are these people in power defending physical cash or recommending an alternative monetary medium resilient to grid failure?

nonrandomstring10• 2 years ago

You know that's the best question anyone has asked me on HN.

I simply said "smart people at the top". I didn't say there were any.

dazc7• 2 years ago

What the police and other authorities 'can do' is a world away from what they 'actually do', in 99% of cases.

You could be unlucky if your crime passes a certain threshold or affects someone with power but, most of the time, it will not be investigated with the resources of the state.

nonrandomstring10• 2 years ago

Exactly the feature desirable to everyone in society. Including the police.

I had a funny conversation with some LE types the other day (in the context of something we call "fly-tipping") about how, in theory, everyone who litters could be brought to book because they leave their fingerprints all over stuff.

Nobody in forensics is ever going to do that unless it's a very serious case. Nobody wants to be compelled to investigate some bs crime just because its possible. Make things too convenient and you've got China.

yyyk2• 2 years ago

how much the police can do to trace cash

It doable but not at all trivial.

It's well past the point of being worth forging

The news seem to indicate plenty of forgers still, e.g.:

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/poss...

it is likely that future banknotes will use einks

einks are too expensive right now?

nonrandomstring10• 2 years ago

einks are too expensive right now?

Maybe yes. But track their falling cost and you'll see where the price point intersects with near disposable cost. European transport tickets made of cheap plasticised card only took a couple of years to incorporate RFID - that's already a long way toward low cost "intelligent cash".

For a brief few weeks in the 1980s we had "phone cards" with stored, decrementable value that you could use a few times. Purely passive and using an optical technique to see where pressure had been applied to plastic (which turns milky). In Hungary in the communist era I saw tram tickets using ingenious mathematics (an ephemeral mechanical key set by the driver) and punched paper holes to provide multi-use.

It's amazing what can be done to make cheap or even disposable portable artifacts to transfer value.

phpisthebest2• 2 years ago

>When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines.

Go to bank, take out 100's, to small mom and pop get change... problem solved.

Further it is highly unlikely that if some bill I got out of ATM finds it way to a crime scene or something that they will be proof of anything a defense lawyer would shoot that down in about 2 secs

> It's well past the point of being worth forging

Not really.

>future banknotes will use einks, embedded printable passive electronics to do all of the things people hope or fear of purely digital cash

and those should be opposed as well

poisonborz2• 2 years ago

You mix things up. Most of the tech you describe is about making sure that bank note is not fake. The tracking part is ad-hoc and shoddy, works only in dense urban settings, closed systems like banking or a big supermarket. Cash usage itself is anonymous.

solatic2• 2 years ago

You're making an argument which is a variant of "if I'm not doing anything wrong, then I have nothing to hide." Privacy is a worthwhile value in and of itself, not least of which because different people have different notions of what "wrong" is and their conception of "wrong" changes over the course of their life.

An example list of completely legal transactions which you might not want someone in your life knowing about:

  a) You don't want your spouse to know that you bought some beers / fast food / pornographic magazines / cigarettes / other vice
  b) You don't want your employer to know that you saw a therapist / oncologist / family planning services
  c) You don't want your parents to know that you bought contraception
  d) You don't want your car insurance provider to know that you purchased a repair from a mechanic (i.e. you don't want your rates increased).

Making payments in cash is making a decision for them not to be entered in some database which may be hacked and sold for profit to someone who values their interests more than your privacy.

nonrandomstring10• 2 years ago

With respect, you're reading too much intent into my words. I am vehemently pro-privacy. In fact I seriously consider over-intrusive authoritarianism to be a mental health disorder and have read somewhat into the works of Adorno etc [0,1] (cue a dozen responses bemoaning how everything done at Berkeley in the 1960s is now-debunked leftist rubbish)

Part of that is helping people to have a realistic but not paranoid view of technological society. My work also means I help people who have serious crimes or security issues to solve, and have legitimate investigatory needs.

I think privacy violations are not rooted in economic greed, but in unboundaried, controlling impulses that get encoded into technology.

Hope I am responding respectfully and appropriately, sorry if I got you wrong. BTW, in a safe way (ie not online) take one of those "authoritarian personality tests". It will shock you how much we have hidden in ourselves just ready to be provoked by demagogues or disinformation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethinking-mental-he...

huytersd• 2 years ago

Cash is very easily tumbled or made anonymous. It’s as simple as going to a casino, buying a large number of chips and then cashing those chips out again.

23B1• 2 years ago

The only fallacy here is that you expect anonymity to be 100% provided by cash.

dahart• 2 years ago

What are you responding to?

Cash is anonymous, by and large. That’s a fact, not a fallacy. I’ve never in my life seen any shops track serial numbers of cash transactions, nor associate them with me. I’m skeptical that anyone does it, but I welcome any evidence of this dubious claim that you’d like to provide. Having your face capture by a camera does not track the bills you used, nor the items you purchased. You’re spinning a mostly false tale.

E-money on the other hand tracks everything you buy, what you buy, when you buy, what you paid, where you bought it, and that information is used to construct a valuable profile of your purchasing habits. That profile is used for advertising. But it could also be used to deny insurance claims. Should be illegal, but I knew someone who worked for a credit card company that informed me they were thinking about how to do this legally.

E-money is tracked on everyone for everything by default, and cash does non of this. It’s insanely expensive for the police to try to trace cash, and they can only do it for one criminal at a time. They do not, and cannot, track everyone’s cash.

Spending profiles captured via e-money tracking are captured by private corporations and they are offered for sale. Any criminal cash tracking by police is used solely for capturing criminal and is otherwise not available to anyone else.

Modern cash is high technology

Again, who’s even arguing? This is a straw man, the context is digital money. There was no debate about how much technology is used for printing bills.

Cash, in evolving forms is here to stay

So you say? I’m not going to argue or pretend to make predictions, but one thing we know for absolute sure is that there is a downward trend of cash transactions globally.

gn4d• 2 years ago

Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked

lmfao what. Unless someone is committing large scale crimes involving bands, no one is tracking some small bills between private citizens, some stores, more citizens, et al.

For the vast majority of people, cash is anonymous. No advertising company or government is obtaining tracking data on your purchase of an apple and a cup of coffee with cash.

hasty_pudding6• 2 years ago

I think privacy crypto will be big if cash goes away.

yaky4• 2 years ago

The other day, I paid cash at the local Chinese-American place, and the owner said "thank you for using cash, it helps small businesses", which took me by surprise. So I asked how much card processors charge, and she went on a bit of a rant, listing processing fees for everything from regular debit cards* charging 3-4% to rewards credit cards being around 7% to special international or world credit cards charging something like 17%. And most of them have a very narrow window to correct or void the transaction. With such rent-seeking behavior by banks, I very much understand wanting to keep cash around.

* Debit cards charged as debit, by entering a PIN. Some terminals allow you to "bypass PIN" and/or automatically charge debit cards as credit. I don't know, it's shady.

dazc7• 2 years ago

We have some small traders in the UK who insist on a minimum spend for accepting cards because of the fees levied. It doesn't really make any business sense although I appreciate the sentiment behind it.

infinitecost• 2 years ago

What part of the world? In the US at least this experience would only apply to a business owner that was getting absolutely fleeced by their processor.

HomeDeLaPot4• 2 years ago

I wish more businesses would (could?) give cash discounts. It's the answer to the convenience and rewards offered by credit cards. If I can save as much or more by paying in cash as I can by paying by card, then I have a great motivation to start carrying cash around!

yaky4• 2 years ago

Several small businesses in my city do charge 3% for using a card. So that is like a cash discount.

Many gas stations (usually ones serving trucks) have cash discounts for fuel, too.

(US, midwest)

dpkirchner• 2 years ago

This is the first I'm hearing of double digit rates -- what cards are those? I'd definitely like to avoid them.

yaky4• 2 years ago

I don't recall exactly, I believe it was some type of business cards, or cards for travel and international use.

switch0072• 2 years ago

Regarding Mr Corbyn's strawberries, if he takes them (or eats them, spoils them etc), is he not then in debt with Aldi? In which case his cash serves as payment of his debt?

I guess you'd be in hot water for the prior act of stealing though

HomeDeLaPot4• 2 years ago

Taking something does not legally incur a debt, it's just a crime. The merchant did not agree to lend you anything, so there's no loan, so you can't pay it off with "legal tender".

alfiedotwtf• 2 years ago

A few months ago, Australia’s second biggest ISP died for a few hours. Retailers tied to their network were unable to process non-cash transactions.

mdp20215• 2 years ago

Months ago, in Singapore, similarly a single relatively small server farm had issues, blocking for a long time a very large number of transactions.

(Some details at: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/dbs-digibank-payl... )

The news outlets in Singapore then commented: please, as these things can always happen, do not forget to bring some cash with you...

canucker20164• 2 years ago

Visa Europe had an outage for a few hours in 2018. see https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/1/17418684/visa-cards-europe...

Canada's payment network had an outage for over an hour last year, 2023 Sep 23. see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/moneris-network-outage-1.6976...

thread_id• 2 years ago

WHAAAAATTTTT!!!!!

“…thousands were queuing in Nairobi to have their eyeballs scanned as part of the “Worldcoin” project, founded by OpenAI chief Sam Altman. In exchange for handing over their biometric data, some 350,000 Kenyans each received 25 free crypto tokens, worth approximately $50. Those tokens were transferred directly via Kenya’s main mobile payments app, M-Pesa.”

Actually that doesn’t sound so forward thinking when you consider that the UN has been doing since 2016:

“In 2016, the UN World Food Programme trialled a system that issued relief payments through the use of biometrics. Refugees were able to buy items from the supermarket using their biometric data as a credential: all they needed to do was scan their iris to pay for an item. The idea was to improve convenience and prevent fraud. Since that trial, the World Food Programme’s Building Blocks initiative has become the world’s largest humanitarian use of blockchain technology.”

vachina• 2 years ago

Haha a UUID tied to my biometrics. What could go wrong.

happytiger2• 2 years ago

Not using cash means someone gets a cut of a processing fee. Every time, with almost no exceptions.

I’m not down to have rent seeking companies taking a slice of my hard earned money just so I don’t have to manage a few pieces of paper.

You’re generally paying 3-4 percent of every transaction now, as that’s pretty standard for debit cards on businesses, and it doesn’t matter if it’s charged to the card holder or the business, the consumer ultimately pays for it in higher prices. Heck, people pay transaction fees on payments they make the to government because the government won’t take cash.

Do we really need to make not paying invisible fees in everything illegal? Seems crazy.

noodlesUK4• 2 years ago

There were already costs. There were always costs and risks associated with cash handling: armored trucks doing cash collection, risks of money in tills being lost. If it really were a lot cheaper you wouldn’t see businesses clamouring to go cashless.

That’s not to say I think cash should go the way of the dodo, but I don’t think there’s that much difference paying g4s to collect your money vs Mastercard.

IMO the benefits of cash are on the consumer, not the business.

poisonborz2• 2 years ago

These are even higher for digital, all the associated software development, audits, etc. That processing fee is on top of this, and is easily variable.

graemep2• 2 years ago

I do not think so. Otherwise the British government would not have needed to outlaw charging customers more for card transactions to encourage the move away from cash.

tyfon5• 2 years ago

I work in a bank and cash handling is a major headache in terms of internal control, logistics, reconciliation and AML. It's a large extra cost.

It is much cheaper for the bank and customers to use cards, but where I live the banks own a payment network that does not involve visa and mastercard so the cost is much lower and there is no rent seeking so card use have no fees.

We also have an app for sending "cash" for free to friends, family and businesses that under the hood are just instant bank payments between the accounts.

SoftTalker2• 2 years ago

Yes there are costs to handling cash. And they are vastly higher than the cost of handling bits. A 3% fee to write some bits to a database is insane. A 3% fee to pay all the people who need to handle the currency in a cash transaction is probably not covering costs.

mab122• 2 years ago

I would argue that cash maybe a little better than cashless because fees are tied to physical problem of moving cash around where as cashless fees are just one board meeting from changing ten fold.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos• 2 years ago

If it was cheaper the government wouldn't force you to take part in the scam under pain of death.

beAbU• 2 years ago

And yet, when last did you get a 3-4% discount when paying cash? I remember that from the 90s and 00s.

In fact, I have seen some small places ask a 3-4% surcharge for cash payments, because banks don't process cash for free any more.

fullspectrumdev2• 2 years ago

A lot of places around here charge a bit less for cash payments.

j7ake• 2 years ago

Cash only restaurants are often 10-20 percent cheaper than comparable restaurants.

Workaccount2• 2 years ago

I have never seen a place with extra fees for cash. However I know many small shops that give discounts for cash or only take cash for small purchases.

thuuuomas• 2 years ago

Every gas station in my area offers a lower cash price.

moooo99• 2 years ago

I’m not down to have rent seeking companies taking a slice of my hard earned money just so I don’t have to manage a few pieces of paper.

You’re pretending as if there weren’t any costs associated with handling cash. There’s almost always a handling fee if you want to put the cash into an account, which you will need to do if you want to pay people that are somewhere else than you are. If you have larger quantities of cash, you’ll also have to pay for safe transportation of the funds. If you make an honest comparison

caeril2• 2 years ago

There’s almost always a handling fee

Citation needed. I've been depositing cash for years, with multiple banks, and nobody has ever charged a "handling fee".

safe transportation of the funds

Yes, a lot of people have this irrational reaction to carrying large amounts of cash, as if your unremarkable Toyota miraculously sports a giant "BRINKS" logo every time you carry cash, attracting the attention of would-be criminals everywhere. I assume you believe that thieves and pickpockets are regularly carrying millimeter-wave scanners to see what's in your pockets, briefcases, backpacks, etc?

happytiger2• 2 years ago

I’m not. Visa and Mastercard collected $138 billion in service fees in 2021. They are among the most profitable companies in the world. You’re pretending that cash handling is a binary. You need a blend. For example, after extensive testing we are not going to send wire transfers exclusively in gold bricks. Though the loss weighs heavy on me.

But you should be very careful in eliminating cash.

I assume cash handling fees are made up by banks who want more transaction fees. That’s not a real thing in my experience. I many times have gotten a discount for cash. I have not shopped a few places because they don’t accept cash. But I have yet to be charged a cash fee by any of the banks I use.

And they have insane surveillance data on their customers from doing so. Data that is used for all kinds of unintended purposes.

Cash is also one of the last strongholds left to maintain anonymity and keep purchasing information truly private without handing heaps of data to the corporations that make a buck off your receipts—or worse, to hackers, in the case of a data breach.

To say nothing of the unbanked… which is a massive issue.

If that’s the future you want, we don’t see eye-to-eye. You are giving up a LOT more than you realize.

phpisthebest2• 2 years ago

The reality is most business prefer the 3% fee because the cost of Cash processing is higher when you factor in Bank Fees, Security, Accounting, Theft, and other factors.

[1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180130005244/en/New...

solatic2• 2 years ago

Banks sometimes charge fees to make cash withdrawals from ATMs, even ATMs belonging to the same bank that holds your account (true at least in my personal case, outside the US).

If you are paid via direct deposit, you're financially incentivized to stay cashless. The direct cost of spending via debit/credit card (if one doesn't carry a balance) is zero, compared to the cost of withdrawing cash.

If you want to inventivize salaried professionals to pay with cash, try outlawing fees on ATM withdrawals first.

cubefox2• 2 years ago

There are now systems that are far cheaper than credit cards or debit cards. In the US it's called: FedNow. The system enables direct bank transfers in real-time, almost for free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow

The support is still very limited, but in India a similar system (UPI) managed to become ubiquitous.

pasttense015• 2 years ago

With Visa/Mastercard... debit and credit cards you get some purchase protection. With those direct bank transfer systems you don't.

Have you never done a chargeback on a credit card? With Fednow, UPI etc you can't.

scotty793• 2 years ago

Exchanging value between two economical entities using pieces of paper seems crazy when you have better ways.

Try to explain buying with cash in 200 years to someone who never seen it.

What if I need to pay just a little, do I tear a bit of the paper?

No, you can't tear. If your piece of paper is worth too much then the seller gives you other pieces of paper worth less.

Can I throw out the rest of paper after I'm done buying?

Not unless you want to lose a piece of your value.

What if I don't have enough pieces of paper on me?

Then you can't buy.

So I should just carry all my worth in pieces of paper on me at all times?

That's a bad idea because when you loose this paper or it gets stolen or destroyed you no longer own their value.

Where do I get the paper from? Your employer can five it to you every month or week and you hold it in your home. Alternatively employer transfers the value to the bank normal way and when you need paper the bank can dispense it to you through various devices or service points.

Are any of those devices handheld?

Unfortunately no.

What if my house get burned down or robbed?

Then you lose all the value associated with all the papers kept there.

And so on.

dudefeliciano• 2 years ago

I don't think OP was arguing to completely get rid of all wired transactions. And for all the points you made you still missed OPs major gripe, paying a third party for every single transaction you make. Wanna give your children pocket money? bank gets a cut...doesn't seem right tbh

nayuki2• 2 years ago

Exchanging value between two economic entities using primitive card numbers seems crazy when you have better ways.

Try to explain buying with a credit card online 200 years ago to someone who has never seen it.

You type in about 23 digits (16-digit card number, 4-digit expiry month, 3-digit verification code) to make a payment.

But these digits only change every few years as you renew your credit card. So many parties will learn of your digits and you won't know who leaked them.

The merchant on the other end can take out any amount of money from your account; it's pull-based, not push-based.

The merchant on the other end can trap you in a recurring subscription without your knowledge or make it very hard to cancel.

People have credit limits in the thousands of dollars, and in any single transaction you are liable to lose that much money. Meanwhile, you can't lose more than the hundreds of dollars of cash in your wallet.

You can call your card issuer to dispute charges, but now you're at the mercy of an intermediary.

The intermediary skims about 2~4% of every transaction, for the luxury of being able to spend your own money.

You can't process certain types of transactions in an offline environment, such as debit cards during a power outage or on an airplane (though Wi-Fi is slowly becoming more common).

And you think cash is crazy?

dr_dshiv2• 2 years ago

Haha, Americans with their 2-4% transaction tax, it’s so funny.

No seriously, when I first moved to the Netherlands I was wondering what kind of backwards country wouldn’t let me use a credit card at the grocery store. And that’s when I learned about how crazy it is that credit cards and even American debit cards have such needlessly high transaction fees.

hhh• 2 years ago

I use an Visa tied to an American bank every day for groceries in NL. I only have ever had issues using a card at a very small record store, I just make sure to carry 100eur in cash just in case. I do have more issues online when something only takes iDEAL though.

xadhominemx13• 2 years ago

You get 95% of it back in the form of rewards, so it's not really a tax at all.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 2 years ago

The EU has indeed banned most of the rent-seeking on payment cards by setting upper bounds on various fees that can be charged.

caldarons• 2 years ago

maybe we should start thinking of payment infrastructure as a core public service if we move away from cash? Just like there is an official entity that can "print" cash, we should start doing the same with digital payments (I believe the EU is doing somethig similar). That way you don't have a duopoly taking a cut of every transaction.

Aerroon2• 2 years ago

Governments should be running their own digital counterparts to cash, but they need to add the anonymity of this cash into the constitution. Otherwise the security apparatus is going to ruin it for everyone.

Gare• 2 years ago

This is called CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) and it is being worked on. But there are concerns about state surveillance and misuse.

marcosdumay2• 2 years ago

I pay a fixed monthly fee for my bank that comes with full access to the interbank payment system. Every business on my country does the same for the other side, and we get unlimited transactions with no marginal cost.

Anyway, as somebody else said, a 3% fee on transactions is just ridiculous. If you get any bit of competition, transaction-value based fees tend to be on the order of 0.5%.

aembleton• 2 years ago

Maybe the government should limit the cut that can be taken to something like 1%. All it would require is some legislation,

santoshalper2• 2 years ago

It definitely matters who it is charged to. In almost all cases, it's just rolled into the overall price of the item, which means you pay it whether you use cash or not. It would be very interesting to see if prices for card were 3% higher across the board, if people would still use them as much. I honestly have no idea.

namaria• 2 years ago

Using debased money (does the paper in the note have any value?) is already submitting to paying seignorage to the issuing authority. There's not escaping it unless you sit on the top of that food chain.

fennecbutt• 2 years ago

Almost like our govs should create a standard for digital currency with 0% fees involved.

But you know, our governments are fucking useless, so that ain't happening anytime soon.

346794• 2 years ago

The new soccer stadium in St. Louis is completely cashless. Upon arrival, you attach a form of payment to a scan of your face, then the system tracks you and your purchases throughout the stadium.

No thanks.

andreygrehov• 2 years ago

What’s interesting is that cash 10% more valuable than digital money. I wonder if that gap will keep increasing.

svggrfgovgf• 2 years ago

Does anyone check their credit card bills or bank statements to be sure that all of the charges are valid and for the correct amount? It seems like if you use electronic payment for everything there would be a lot of items to verify. Or do you just assume there's never any errors?

nabeards• 2 years ago

Yes, we do. But nobody we know does. We are fanatic at tracking our spending too, though, and that seems to be a dying art.

pasttense015• 2 years ago

I think it is common to check that all the charges are valid--since there is a lot of credit card number theft around. But I think it is uncommon to check that they are the correct amount--instead you eyeball the numbers and don't do further checking unless a charge seems unreasonable.

tupolef• 2 years ago

You can use a banknote for an unlimited number of transactions, with no intermediary, and no tax per transaction.

States and banks benefit by printing this tool for you, because in return they control the movement of money when it comes back to them, and its value.

But with digital currency, they've hit the jackpot, realizing that they can have their cake and eat it too: they can control the movement of money, its value and even tax it on a per-transaction basis. And without any advantage other than saving space in your pocket.

Geee• 2 years ago

My bank freezed my access to my debit card and online bank recently, without a reason. They just sent me a message that I should visit the branch in person. Not going to happen. Fortunately I could open a new bank account online and had some spare cash too.

For the first time I realized that I'm a slave to my bank. They can just freeze my money just like that.

In a fully cashless system you'd be a complete slave to the system.

unicornmama3• 2 years ago

Yes. Complete a complete slave. LeVar Burton will have to come out of retirement to make a Roots sequel so that the world can understand your harsh mistreatment.

alexpetralia• 2 years ago

You are a slave to many systems - labor markets, product markets, food markets - all of which are not controlled by you. You can be cut off "just like that" if the powers that be choose to do so. In the modern world you simply cannot survive without depending on other parts of society. Given the alternative, I don't find this to be such a bad compromise.

CommanderData• 2 years ago

The ability to shutdown any persons the government doesn't like using any growing list of $Excuses is worrying.

Currency is a freedom to perform transaction and arguably a given right, it's existed since humans learnt trade.

Cash allows anyone to transact without a prerequisite or control. Two parties. Centralised digital currency will change it.

That worry doesn't even include the privacy concerns and as systems become centralised either through standards or legislation. It will be easy to track someones habits or location globally.

fzeroracer3• 2 years ago

The government has always been able to shut you down. If they wanted to, they would pull you aside with no recourse and the police would execute civil forfeiture (see also: steal) against anything on your person, car or home. Cash makes this worse.

Nor does it save you from 90% of transactions you do. Banks will know when you deposit/withdraw money. Stores know the moment you walk in. Unless you deal purely in cash (and I mean PURELY) someone somewhere will know when and how you're spending your money.

If you want to deal with privacy concerns then it needs to be codified in law. And that involves dealing with the entire chain, not just point of sale and not just thinking cash will save you.

jonkho• 2 years ago

There are things that are justified to exist whose sole purpose is keeping things in-check. If any of your aforementioned tools gets abused by the authorities we can still fall back to using cash. If you take away the fallback alternative, then abuse is much more difficult to keep in check. This is called Game Theory.

HomeDeLaPot4• 2 years ago

There's a qualitative difference between the government being able to freeze the accounts of every person whose phone was detected at a protest, and the government having to send agents out to physically find each of those people, search them and their property, and seize their cash. The first is cheap and easy for the government to do on a large scale, and difficult for the protesters to block. The second is far more expensive for the government, and the protesters have more options to fight back—run, hide the cash, etc. Not to mention it will probably drum up sympathy for the oppressed.

And in the end, physically seizing cash & goods only takes away what the protesters have at the time—they can still go earn more cash to transact with, unless they are arrested. Someone whose accounts are frozen, and who is prevented from opening new accounts, and who can't use cash, is running out of options.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

just like security it's a spectrum and not a 0 or 1. I could live on cash right now if I wanted to, so it isn't 90%. If the government stops issue it and issues debit cards only or allows banks to do it then that becomes impossible. The government could always come to your house and disappear you or trump up some charges and throw you in prison indefinitely, even in the USA, so that's not really an argument

jas-• 2 years ago

Be worried when laws get passed against barter systems that would circumvent these systems

HomeDeLaPot4• 2 years ago

I don't think barter is a realistic way to circumvent the disappearance of cash. Sure, it'll work once in a while, when you happen to have something of equal value that the other guy wants—but most of the time it'll be such a drag on every transaction that transactions just won't happen often. Want to get some groceries? Are you just going to hand the cashier a pair of shoes in return? There are good reasons physical currencies have existed for thousands of years, in many forms across many societies. I think rather than barter, we'd have to fall back on something like gold, seashells... Something that's hard to fake, hard to make, easy to appraise, and easy to carry. Like cash.

alkonaut5• 2 years ago

Not used a coin or paper bill for several years now. It’s now at the point where I don’t know what the most common bills and coins look like since they were changed a few years back and I have never owned most of them.

I should keep cash as a backup just like I keep some canned food, but I wonder how society would work in that scenario when many stores don’t have cash registers, many bank offices don’t allow cash deposits and so on. The US would be far more resilient in that situation.

apapapa• 2 years ago

Luckily we still have crypto

thelastparadise• 2 years ago

I like to stop by the ATM on the way to the store and get a few bills out, then use it at regular stores. It freaks them out every time but I find it is a better money to use.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

Yeah it sucks. I can't quite put my finger on it, but is seems like giving up every transaction to the government and corps. That seems like a terrible terrible thing just for a little bit more convenience. I have some bit of hope though, it seems like Gen Z is seeing that "tech fixes everything" is bullshit and see to be enjoying less materialistic and "gotta get the latest/greatest". Millennials were likewise less materialistic than Gen X. Hopefully people come around to using tech where it makes sense and use it less in those areas that are detrimental to quality of life and where simple solutions work just fine.

david2ndaccount• 2 years ago

The issues with physical currency are almost entirely self-inflicted. Governments should retire the smallest denominations and introduce larger coins/bills. In the US, all of the coins are worth so little that the only practical coin is the rare half-dollar. Retire all of those worthless coins, require transactions be rounded to the nearest half-dollar or dollar, and issues with physical currency for the user will go away.

Now of course, the government won’t do this as they want physical currency to be inconvenient so they can track you and deny you access to your own money when they find it convenient. We’re in an era of growing authoritarianism. Hopefully we survive this one.

alexwhb• 2 years ago

This is a really good point. And one of the reasons I hardly ever use cash is having to deal with so much annoying change. If you eliminate most change… cash becomes not a big deal

CSMastermind• 2 years ago

I would argue the root cause of this phenomenon is inflation and the first step we should take is to make the dollar a stable unit of measure not to consciously allow its value to fall.

kuchenbecker3• 2 years ago

Deflation is worse than inflation, and it's hard to hit a single number, so central banks aim for low, stable inflation. 1-2% inflation isn't very perceptible vs 0 but avoids deflation.

tastyfreeze4• 2 years ago

You know what? That sounds like a great idea. A single dollar doesn't buy much these days. Maybe we should add a zero to all the bills too.

realcertify• 2 years ago

The current trend is to move from cash to electronic money controlled by the banks. Previously the money deposited to a bank account was the clients money that the bank just kept. Now it's the banks money that can be frozen by any reason and it's the client's responsibility to prove his innocence.

Next step is a blockchain-based crypto, controlled only by a single structure, such as Fed. Total control directly by the government, no banks involved. Full access to the history of all purchases and means to immediately lock out anyone who does anything "wrong".

Personally I'm going to move out of the country as soon as it forbids the cash transactions, as I don't want my kids to be slaves to the government.

yakireev• 2 years ago

Personally I'm going to move out of the country as soon as it forbids the cash transactions

Which country is it? In many jurisdictions cash transactions are already illegal above certain threshold. It might be that you won't have too many places to go.

yankoff2• 2 years ago

Theoretically, they can lock you out by suspending your passport and preventing you from traveling even if you leave the country. Also they can have full access to your bank records given the warrant and you can't make any serious purchases with cash.

Even in an unlikely apocalyptic scenario you have described they won't gain much more power than they already have. I don't see how this makes you a slave by itself. Only if government begins using this as a tool to control you but then, if we hit such a point, they have much more other tools people have to worry about.

xadhominemx13• 2 years ago

What are you talking about? Deposits that came in via paper money are treated in exactly the same manner as those deposited electronically.

yankoff2• 2 years ago

Cash transactions over $10k have to be reported to the IRS. You'd have to provide ID and TIN. If that weren't the case, criminals wouldn't have had problems with money laundering.

Towaway692• 2 years ago

I once had this discussion with an economics person and pointed out that if my country moves to a card-only society, then I would move to using USD notes instead.

I'm sure I won't be the only one accepting USD notes as payment.

So really either all countries go card only or people just move to other currencies, at least for certain transactions.

waynesonfire• 2 years ago

No it's not. In my neighborhood, businesses are starting to offer cash discounts. The credit card companies are getting too greedy with their fees.

coppsilgold• 2 years ago

It's technologically feasible to create centralized digital cash that is much more anonymous than physical cash. You can do it by using zero knowledge proofs where you have vouchers & nullifiers. It's virtually the same idea that powers Tornado Cash.

It's tractable but challenging, every single transfer of a digital-cash note would necessitate an entry into a public Merkle-tree. You could mitigate this by introducing a multitude of denominations (a separate Merkle-tree for each one) trading some anonymity-set size for the mitigation. Another possibility is to introduce special cash pools that have expiry dates, incentivise their use with lower transaction costs. The transaction costs would have to also be ZKP vouchers but much more flexibility on those, such as rapid expiry.

If a government was crazy enough to do this, they would give up all control over how the money is spent. The only control they would have is whether or not to shut the whole thing down. Discrimination would not be feasible, reversing transactions impossible. They could still print money of course.

sneak2• 2 years ago

Governments did everything they could to stop Tornado Cash.

Uncensorable, anonymous digital payments is the very last thing the state wants for its citizens. That allows private people to raise (and pay for) an army.

Preventing rival armies within their territory is the primary and most important function of a state.

bookofjoe• 2 years ago

I've been reading this for going on 30 years and I still have some in my wallet which is accepted everywhere. Seems to me this is just a recurring trope trotted out for want of an article topic.

dfawcus• 2 years ago

I was in a large supermarket (Tesco) today where they were experiencing "technical difficulties". A repeated announcement over the tannoy stated they could not accept contact-less payments, not by card, not by phone.

They were still accepting cash and physical card insertion (Chip & PIN, or Chip & Signature).

Despite that lots of people were getting flustered at the checkouts (manned and self service) when they were unable to pay. Always carry some cash!

lawrenceyan• 2 years ago

Crypto is an electronic replacement for cash that is ideally not dependent on centralized entities incentivized by processing fees (still in progress of course, but we're rapidly getting there!).

DaleNeumann• 2 years ago

Fees on digital payments by merchants should be banned, if we are going into a digital era without cash and an expectation that everyone pays digitaly then they should come along with us and be more accommodating or atleast more realistic if they want our business, even if it is just a small cup of coffee the convenience of tap and scan is far superior to dragging your feet to a machine in the middle of the night looking over your shoulder always expecting the worst.

soco• 2 years ago

Crazy idea: instead of fighting the consequences of surveillance society, how about we fight the surveillance ITSELF? Everybody here agrees surveillance is bad, yet I bet right now there a few HN readers working on surveillance tech, and not at least most of us are voters, some even involved a bit deeper in politics. How about we actually do something against that what we know it's wrong?

Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

Related Stories