National security. When there's civil unrest, or war, all the permission channels are going to go down. Cash is freedom.
In praise of cash
201–210 of 369 posts
Re: In praise of cash
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin uses a system that doesn't rely on any single person's authority.
No, but it generates a perfect paper trail.
The paper trail is perfect only if bitcoin was exchanged for money. It is possible to construct a chain of transactions without touching any money (I buy a widget from China with bitcoins, widget's owner buys something else with these bitcoins, etc).
Re: In praise of cash
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bingo, I think you nailed it. The cashless society – which more accurately should be called the bank-payments society... is a utopia where money cannot leave – or even exist – outside the banking system, but can only be transferred from bank to bank. Such a system replaces a relationship between two parties with relationships between those parties and the bank. If either party falls out of favour with the bank, they…
> If either party falls out of favour with the bank, they can't do business with each other. For an immediately ready example, I present Paypal Seller/Buyer disputes on eBay. I'm always a little tickled by tech people hyping the idea of a cashless society. Don't we all hate Paypal?
Pretty much. I tried using my account from France, and now my account is locked, and there are a bunch of hoops to jump through to restore access. No thanks.
Re: In praise of cash
#204While I agree that cash is extremely convenient and largely anonymous, it is still much more of a hassle to manage than credit or debit cards are. I lived in NYC for a bunch of years and the one thing that I absolutely do not miss is paying for >$100 dinners, entirely in cash, because the restaurant was "too cheap" to handle processing and transaction fees.
Heh, where I live in Brooklyn there are no places that take card for less than $20 (sometimes $10). It definitely required some adjusting.
Almost certainly a violation of their agreement with their card processor. If you want to be a jerk, you can pressure them into taking your card.
Re: In praise of cash
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh, where I live in Brooklyn there are no places that take card for less than $20 (sometimes $10). It definitely required some adjusting.
And yet I'm living in a village outside Leicester in the UK and I've paid <£0.50 on a card/using Android Pay on multiple occasions.
Historically a lot of restaurants and retail establishments in the US had minimum charges for credit cards. My anecdata is that this is far less common today (Brooklyn notwithstanding).
There's also just been this psychological shift that makes it generally OK in most places to put that $3 salad on a credit card. I'd never have done that 10 years ago. Now I routinely charge my lunch or a cup of coffee.
I don't know how much of this is changes to credit card fee structures and how much is that it's just become a cost of doing business many merchants now feel they have to put up with.
Re: In praise of cash
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can go weeks without touching cash these days. Nonetheless, I find the idea that I could be prevented from making a person-to-person financial transaction for even a modest amount without a paper trail pretty unsettling.
Last year I tired of reconciling my credit card and checkbook accounts, so shifted to using cash only (I have credit cards if there's an emergency). So far I'm spending ~10% less each month. I'm more careful about purchases. I get and seek cash discounts. Best of all I don't need to do the reconciliation.
Research suggests you are not alone. We spend more when we pay with plastic.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/credit-cards-ma...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/your-money/credit-cards-e...
Re: In praise of cash
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not so perfect. Take, for example, using a tumbler - the prosecution can't prove that the coins going into the tumbler were yours, only that you got some coins from the tumbler and exchanged them for dollars.
It might make it hard to prove the coins' source, but it would make proving money laundering easier.
Using a tumbler is not against the law. For one thing, you can't launder bitcoins because bitcoins are a commodity, not considered money.
Re: In praise of cash
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm just not sure you can construct a coherent argument around that though. Obviously a seller isn't obligated to accept cash; is there a suggestion that we should legally require sellers to do so?
>> a seller isn't obligated to accept cash Isn't he? I don't know how it works in US, but at least in Poland every banknote has printed statement that it is "the legal payment method ". The law institutes a fine for any seller that refuses payment in cash.
IANAL, but In the US, banknotes specifically reference "debts." For places where you pay after receiving the goods or services (e.g. many restaurants) they must accept cash, but they may refuse to accept cash if you pay prior to receiving goods & services.
Re: In praise of cash
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those out of the loop, miners work together in pools to combine their mining power. With more mining power, the more likely it is for them to mine a block (of the blockchain) and divide its payout among members of the pool. Pools cause centralization of mining power. You can see a list of pools and the percentage of their mining power at [ https://blockchain.info/pools ]. Looking at the chart, you can see that th…
A Sybil attack is unrelated to consensus, but otherwise what you said is accurate. A Sybil attack can occur when a system designer mistakes a system identity to be exclusive with other ones. e.g. you could create a website that used a phone number as a user identifier and give every new user a $5 signup bonus. But if someone found a way to create valid phone numbers for less than $5 each, they could exploit your new…
Ah ok, I think that a 51% attack is what I was describing. I would update my comment, but it appears that I can no longer edit it.
Re: In praise of cash
#210But cash is an untraceable anonymous currency, used by drug dealers and child pornographers!