Cashless

[Eric P]

Have you noticed more and more places are not accepting cash? Especially restaurants that are reopening.

Grand government conspiracy to track your movements through CC data for rona tracing for those unwilling to use tracing apps?

Or people to afraid of germs on cash?

[Great-Kazoo]

interesting you posted this.

Was watching one of those brit police shows.
The suspect was confronted with his credit card account. They told him. You stopped using your credit card, except for large purchases over a month ago. How did you buy anything w/out using your card?
I had some cash laying around. You had money in the house? Had you declared this money as income? No it was there from before the wife died.

If it wasn't yours, how did she come by it?

They literally accused him of having received the money, illegally, due to there being no "small charges" like grocery's, etc on his card.


Lucky for him, he didn't have any knives in the house.

[whitewalrus]

interesting you posted this.

Was watching one of those brit police shows.
The suspect was confronted with his credit card account. They told him. You stopped using your credit card, except for large purchases over a month ago. How did you buy anything w/out using your card?
I had some cash laying around. You had money in the house? Had you declared this money as income? No it was there from before the wife died.

If it wasn't yours, how did she come by it?

They literally accused him of having received the money, illegally, due to there being no "small charges" like grocery's, etc on his card.


Lucky for him, he didn't have any knives in the house.

UK tax laws make the US look like they don?t even care to collect. You have to report and pay on anything really and their taxes are high compared to ours.

[Great-Kazoo]

UK tax laws make the US look like they don?t even care to collect. You have to report and pay on anything really and their taxes are high compared to ours.

They are, but then again look to CZ, NY, NJ, Il for the future. Hell look at CO since the d's took control, like a boat with no power slowly heading towards the waterfall

[whitewalrus]

They are, but then again look to CZ, NY, NJ, Il for the future. Hell look at CO since the d's took control, like a boat with no power slowly heading towards the waterfall

True, things aren't looking too bright.

[Irving]

Some restaurants in a big city, pretty sure in California, tried this and got shot down by the courts. Pretty sure it's illegal. It's nothing to do with any conspiracies, it's just people trying to convince themselves that cash is going out of style and wanting to use apps. Businesses always like to incorporate new technology as well because it makes people look good on paper when they want a promotion.

If there were a government conspiracy, it'd be about collecting more tip money in taxes more than tracking I'd think.

[FoxtArt]

There is various news stories that persisted about how the virus spreads on cash, so small business owners are probably reacting to that. It's legal tender, and that sounds correct, but I also somewhat doubt especially a moderate to left-leaning judge is going to rule against a business doing it cause 'covid somehow changes the rules. Yet, it's not like the government is sending MIB to tell businesses "We're tracking the cartel in this town, only accept debit". I do find it amusing how "studies" show it survives for almost no time on paper, but somehow a long time on cash it would be mighty inconvenient for the gov if it couldn't use paper all the sudden.

That said, a main reason a lot of governments are heavily interested in cryptocurrencies is their ability to ledger, e.g. paper trial going back to the origination of each "coin" or other unit. That's a whole, different, and unique issue from the OP though.

[ChickNorris]

There is various news stories that persisted about how the virus spreads on cash, so small business owners are probably reacting to that. It's legal tender, and that sounds correct, but I also somewhat doubt especially a moderate to left-leaning judge is going to rule against a business doing it cause 'covid somehow changes the rules. Yet, it's not like the government is sending MIB to tell businesses "We're tracking the cartel in this town, only accept debit". I do find it amusing how "studies" show it survives for almost no time on paper, but somehow a long time on cash it would be mighty inconvenient for the gov if it couldn't use paper all the sudden.

That said, a main reason a lot of governments are heavily interested in cryptocurrencies is their ability to ledger, e.g. paper trial going back to the origination of each "coin" or other unit. That's a whole, different, and unique issue from the OP though.

Yes you can track the coin or unit (Ethereum & Bitcoin for example) because they are explicitly designed for it, however they track back to the original key which is public though an individuals identity isn't necessarily known. There are both public & private keys.

A nation state has access to the metadata that can track back an individual to their public key.

There are other cryptocurrencies that are designed for anonymity, Monero for example.

The ledgers from named cryptocurrencies above are always public however the private key holder is not.


Its very complicated. Best distillation I got.

[FoxtArt]

Yes you can track the coin or unit (Ethereum & Bitcoin for example) because they are explicitly designed for it, however they track back to the original key which is public though an individuals identity isn't necessarily known. There are both public & private keys.

A nation state has access to the metadata that can track back an individual to their public key.

There are other cryptocurrencies that are designed for anonymity, Monero for example.

The ledgers from named cryptocurrencies above are always public however the private key holder is not.


Its very complicated. Best distillation I got.

Good summary. Most of the time the gov' can track e.g. the bitcoin transactions down, but what gov really wants is hands in commercial or it's own gov cryptocurrencies. China has already done just that. It'll probably be some time before the monetary supply here moves that direction (two decades, maybe?), but there is certainly groups of our gov already advocating for it now under a guise of accountability "you can track where we spend each dollar!" and it almost seems inevitable unless some other more attractive unicorn flies into view in the next few years with even juicer gov' meat. But yeah, it's not accountability, it's total control and tracking what matters most.

[ChickNorris]

Good summary. Most of the time the gov' can track e.g. the bitcoin transactions down, but what gov really wants is hands in commercial or it's own gov cryptocurrencies. China has already done just that. It'll probably be some time before the monetary supply here moves that direction (two decades, maybe?), but there is certainly groups of our gov already advocating for it now under a guise of accountability "you can track where we spend each dollar!" and it almost seems inevitable unless some other more attractive unicorn flies into view in the next few years with even juicer gov' meat. But yeah, it's not accountability, it's total control and tracking what matters most.

Bitcoin is just a public untrusted ledger. The government uses a private trusted ledger hosted by banks. It is called SWIFT. Whereas with cryptocurrencies the ledgers are public & untrusted. Private trusted ledgers will always be more efficient.

Separating the use of blockchain from cryptocurrency, there are applications to manage commerce responsibly.