For example: in Canada, the bank accounts of those who protested were literally frozen (for simply speaking out or being critical) and talks of potential CBDCs (aka. used to deduct funds from one's account as a fine) whilst considering on abolishing cash altogether.

The alternative (for now at least) may be Crypto (online) until they consider that "illegal" in the future penalizing those who are using it, framing that as money laundering or tax evasion, whilst pushing their propaganda of "tap & go is safe & convenient".

The answers are divided between:

• "Cash is King" (it allows anonymous or "private" transactions between you and the merchant)
• "Contactless" (convenient, but your purchases & transactions are monitored by the state)

Cash is apparently the last bastion of "anonymous" transactions where it doesn't appear on one's statement and one gets to keep their money without the state deducting it from their account since a nation's central bank has monopoly over CBDCs and one's funds.

That's not even the end of it: them trying to make BTC or equivalent illegal by making CBDCs the default replacing gold overnight, it would mean all those bills you have are worthless. At this point, the only payment method is CBDCs that are linked to one's digital ID.

It is not the anonymity that is important.

It is not having to ask someone permission to spend money like with a debit card, credit card, and even fucking crypto need institutional permission to have access to your power to spend yo money.

anonymity ain't shit.

Cash is not anonymous. The serial numbers are being used for tracking.

There's this:

https://thecashtracker.com/

If you get your cash out of an ATM, the machine could (I don't know if it does, but I suspect at least some do) scan every serial number of every bill it gives you. To counter that, you'd need to "launder" it though some other person, the more times and the farther away the better, until it gets spent back into the system, where it can be, once again scanned.

If you get your cash out of an ATM, and then turn around and stick it in a bill receiver at some self-checkout machine, that could possibly be tracked. I don't think this is hypothetical, I just didn't find any evidence in a quick search, but the site above shows it happens somehow.

Yes, cash is much better than a card that tracks every purchase, but it's not completely anonymous, either. And, it takes effort to ensure it's anonymous. It's not a given.

Hmmm. Since defacing a bill isn't a crime, marking out the serial number of every bill you receive would break the chain, except that you'd be one of the very few doing it. That would need to become widespread for it to have any real impact. Oh, but probably the machine would reject a bill with a marked-out serial number.

There are individuals who "copy existing bills exchanging those for legitimate ones with different serial numbers" (counterfeit) and that actually happens, like for example: North Korea is infamous for producing convincing clones of US$100 bills that look believeable.

The withdrawal can be done by using another person's card (instead of your own) making it look like they did the transaction (think of skimming devices implanted onto ATMs that are compromised). However it's a grey area.

I feel (maybe hope) that countries doing this would face significant challenges with currency substitution and private currencies. Ultimately if I want to buy something and my neighbor wants to sell me that thing the government becomes the, "Is there someone you forgot to ask?" meme.

It'd be metal af if I bought something from my neighbor and paid him in Yuan, lol.

all those bills you have are worthless.

That's the tricky thing is technically the government doesn't actually control what is worth stuff, its all just vibes. By undermining faith in their currency the government could actually lose a bit of control, not gain it. This was actually a huge fucking problem early in US history.

No serials on coins!

That's just theft. I mean, how could I use a stranger's card to withdraw money from my account? How would I get a stranger's card?

I mean, more of a friends of friends or room mate (not a complete stranger). Like the memes equivalent to "kid uses mom's CC to spend on fortnite skins" but it's more on your own circle, withdrawing large sums is too obvious. So, an individual will only make their own family members or friends withdraw small amounts at a time at separate intervals (every few months).

I feel by private they mean illegal and in the case of the USA at least, the elite are doing all their criminal transfers in the open anyway.

I remember reading an article from Australia where a woman requested to withdraw a five figure sum (over 20k) in cash from her own bank account but they're like "sorry, we can't do that" making excuses on the way of "need proof on how you acquired such money", even though she provided all the evidence, they still refused anyway. She was like "WTF? It's my own money!" so there's a possibility that banks dictate how much one can withdraw.

Many people believe Bitcoin was motivated by prospecting and pyramid schemes, but þe white paper focuses almost entirely (re motivation) on þe freedom aspect: to be free of monetary hegemony.

Sounds like pulling cash at a grocery store/gas station may bypass that serial number logging from traditional ATMs?

If I get cash in change from a vendor who doesn’t know my identity, and spend it at another vendor who doesn’t know my identity, what is there to tie the serial numbers to?

In the event of a disaster where the power grid and/or data communication goes down, how the fuck you gonna buy groceries, or anything else for that matter? 🤔

Even if the bill was scanned when you withdrew it at the ATM and again when you spent it, there’s no way to know if the bill changed hands in the meantime through unrecorded transactions.

Nothing, they're blowing it out of proportion.

However, if you put them into a banking machine or deposit in your bank, then serial tracking can become something you should at least be aware of.

That's where cash serves a purpose, as a payment method during that kind of scenario.

I'm not sure how card payments work in the US, but here the terminals have offline-mode where the purchases are just stored locally until it comes online again.

If there's a total blackout, having cash maybe be better (but absolutely no guarantee they're usable at the grocery store)...but there's a whole lot of other much more pressing issues in that case.

Same in the UK, but its more a case of protecting people or who are liable to being scammed.

Not to mention no ATM camera recording the transaction

Some of your bills in your pocket may come from the vendor A, some may come from an ATM. So the bank knows some of the bills you got.

Vendor B might go shopping somewhere, or deposit his cash in a bank. Or put it in a sorting machine that scans the serial numbers.

You pay B with some bills from A and some bills from the ATM. And now the bank can connect all three dots. The transactions aren't completely transparent, but aren't truly anonymous anymore.

Anybody who really wants anonymity online -- like, to buy drugs and such -- is already using Monero.

Who needs cash when you have bottle caps

At best, B’s bank knows that B had some bills that once passed through your hands. But they have no way of knowing if you actually spent the money at B’s or if there were other transactions in between.

i feel old fashioned when i hear of such things; here i am having odd conversations with dealers and using cash like it's the stone age. lol

the entire money system of fallout boy doesn't make sense; surely making the bottle costs more than the caps alone.

Definitely, cash is critical

If cash stops being used, we'll switch to something like gold.

Im not cool with a cashless society that is not much more egalitarian.

As Metallica said, sad but true. Ok, you have all your money in your bank account, but those are literally just 0 and 1s, our economy depends literally in non tangible numbers, and that's it. And you cannot pay unless the bank explicitly allow it, so your "money' isn't your money now.

Seriously get with the modern age. Darknet markets have sellers with reviews, and you have so much choice as a consumer.

Caps in fallout are backed by water. It's not about how much it costs to make them. It's like how the dollar used to be backed by gold.

it's not for a lack of trying. i can google how to recompile the kernel or how to use tor, but i haven't yet figured out how to google finding these sources.

not to mention that creating an non-traceable wallet of crypto currencies as well.

Same in the UK, but its more a case of protecting people

That happened to me in the US once. I deposited a paper check (cheque) for a large sum, and Bank Lady started asking questions. She was trying to protect me against scammers. There are scams where the perp gives the mark a bad check. Mark deposits bad check, withdraws funds immediately which banks let you do if you're a customer in good standing. Mark gives funds to perp. A few days later, bank discovers the check is bad, unwinds the transaction. Now the mark is out the money. The perp has gone to ground and cannot be located.

I assured Bank Lady that I knew about that risk, and I trusted of the origin of the check. That satisfied her.

wasn't nixon also a president in the fallout universe? would he too not divest from the gold standard in universe?

Yes, but it won't. Knowing everything about us is too important.

I’m not crazy brushed up on my fallout lore but I know that the general timeline is the exact same as the real world but the fallout universe splits when (in real life) the microchip was invented, instead of that (in the fallout universe) they focused on atomic nuclear energy instead of making computers smaller. I think it’s generally the same even after as far as presidents go, there are mentions of Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, etc. but it might be similar to the Elvis case in universe where there’s not much information left on these people so it’s hard to learn about and the average person in the wasteland probably barley understands what a president is

whilst considering on abolishing cash altogether

No personal exp with this, but I have a vague idea that the Nordic countries, or maybe Singapore etc are further down the cashless road than we North American peeps are. Though they may also have better protections in some ways.

I do want to preserve cash as an option. I try to use it for everything I can, just to safeguard the option. I try to get my friends to do it, but they find contactless too convenient.

The hypothetical tracker doesn't need to know 100%.

The kind of data analytics that would be used to track serial numbers to determine the parties involved works perfectly fine with probabilistic/incomplete information. The goal isn't to create evidence for a courtroom, it's to build a graph of the people that you interact with so further intelligence collection could be planned.

Especially with things like cyberattacks (institution losing access to your accounts), scamming (you lose access to your accounts), power failures (everyone loses access to their accounts), etc.

I mean, I literally have a small stash of money in the closet (some 20's and a bunch of smaller notes), so that if a semi-major disaster hits, I can still buy any supplies I can find that I need - gas, water, food, a couple nights in a hotel, whatever. Plastic is a great backup system, but it relies on me having my card, my card having enough money free, the merchant having power to run the card, the merchant's communications working, the system they link into having power and communications, etc. With cash, it's just "here, take this" and it's all good.

it’s to build a graph of the people that you interact with so further intelligence collection could be planned.

It's the Finding Paul Revere analysis, and it can get scary.

fuck Metallica

I'm not saying the dollar was/wasn't backed by gold in fallout. That was the case in real life up until they separated them at some point. I'm just saying that's how caps work in the fallout universe. Their value is based on a specific amount of water you can trade them for.

Not even just permission, especially given most of these systems are made to operate on your phone rather than through a physical card.

Oops, your phone died? Sorry, no groceries for you! Did your internet connection stop working on your phone? Sooooooooooorry, you're not gonna be able to pay your bus fare.

Coins dont have serial numbers. Time to pay for everything in quarters.

For example: in Canada, the bank accounts of those who protested were literally frozen (for simply speaking out or being critical)

Yeah... try using that lie on people who live in Ottawa, see how it goes.

Why do you think you'd be able to buy groceries with cash if the power grid goes down?

Fallout boy?

In most cases this problem is already there, even with cash. One time the local supermarkets lost the connection to their backbone system due to a cyber attack. They did not sell a thing, not even for cash, as their registers were dependend on that connection.