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.

[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]

Symantecs maybe. As I understand it, it is illegal for a restaurant to refuse to accept cash for a service, however they have the right to refuse service as long as its not based on race, religion etc.

Not dissimilar to not accepting amex, for example.

Curious what I might learn & please correct me if I'm misinformed.

[def90]

Places are going cashless due to the CDC guidance saying that the coronavirus can be transferred via touching contaminated surfaces as well as it is easier to maintain the forced 6ft distance between the buyer and the seller. Now this past week the CDC is saying that it is unlikely you would get it via touching a contaminated surface so now there is only the maintaining the distance issue.

[ray1970]

Great. No virus on my mail or packages but now the cash in my wallet is suddenly infected.

[beast556]

Today was the first farmers market for us and more people payed with cash today than ever before. Usuly we do 80% card 20% cash. Today we did 80% cash and 20% card. With that said the market was packed and people were spending money today.

[MrPrena]

[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.