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I agree, but the main point of an e-krona is exactly to try and reduce that risk. One of the proposed goals is to have non-traceable transactions. Seems unrealistic to me but that would be the holy grail.
Untraceable anonymous transactions is the minimal requirement for it not to be harmful and dystopian.
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We have known how to do untraceable* transactions [0] since 1982. There has now been thirty years of cryptographic research building on these results. The reason it hasn't happened is not because we can't do it but because governments resist the additional privacy protections. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash * - For some values of untracable. The privacy provided by ecash is in theory less than cash provides…
Yeah, politically unrealistic is what I meant.
Second, this trend is visible in many countries in Europe. In my 7 years in the Netherlands before I moved to Sweden, it would be unusual for me to have any cash on me and in recent years the number of 'pin' (card) only points of sale there has been growing tremendously.
A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every time they seek to obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation, and that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time.
Yes, "permission" is the right vocabulary to use in this instance. In fact, the opposite, being "permissionless", is exactly one of the main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. This is why cryptocurrencies should be seen as competing with cash, and not with permissioned systems (credit cards, Paypal). This is also why, IMHO, countries moving toward a cashless society will inevitably lead to more people—the underbanked and the unbanked—slowly using cryptocurrencies more and more over time, not by choice but by necessity.
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Serious q: one of the big arguments against untraceable transactions is organized crime. Yes they're very real. But what if untraceable transactions were limited to small amounts and slow rates, such that you could personally provide for your family but not run an enterprise? (basically that's what physical cash attempts, and as long as the denominations are kept low, it sort of works)
You can ask the questions about whether it should or should not enable crime, but the question is useless, because it doesn't address whether it can or cannot enable crime. When you ask this question, you come to the conclusion that it can enable crime. So then you might argue that if it can enable crime, we must do something about it. Admirable ideas, but you then need to ask the question, can we do anything about i…
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No. Self sufficiency is a continuum, not a boolean. Cash decentralizes permission for economic transactions.
I'm genuinely curious, what would be the rationale or incentive for a private payment processor (in a competitive payments market) to reject a legitimate transaction? The only reason I can think of would be false positive on fraud detection or system error or the such, all problems with the medium, not with centralization/permissions.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/9/18079880/paypal-proud-boy...
Why does there need to be a separate government issued digital currency? Presumably all of the private accounts that people are currently using are measured in Kr already, and the banks already operate at fractional reserve so the actual paper doesn't exist. As an American, I make about one cash purchase a year, but that doesn't mean that I'm not spending US Dollars. It seems to me that calling digital money "e-krona…
A society without cash is a society in which every person has no choice but to get the permission of someone they don’t know and will never meet each and every time they seek to obtain food, water, shelter, or transportation, and that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time.
« that permission can be revoked instantly, silently, and invisibly at any time » Yes, "permission" is the right vocabulary to use in this instance. In fact, the opposite, being "permissionless", is exactly one of the main selling points of cryptocurrencies: no authority can prevent a user from sending or receiving bitcoins, or ether, etc. This is why cryptocurrencies should be seen as competing with cash, and not wi…
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I'm a Norwegian who went to a Swedish music festival last summer. I couldn't pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it's a de facto monopoly). I couldn't sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn't borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn't have cash (and it mostly wasn't…
edit: auto complete filled in butcoin, corrected. Not sure how that got in my dictionary!
I'm a Norwegian who went to a Swedish music festival last summer. I couldn't pay for a lot of things there, since the booths only accepted Swish (the only relevant Swedish mobile payment solution, it's a de facto monopoly). I couldn't sign up and use Swish on my phone, since it only accepts Swedish bank accounts. I couldn't borrow money from my Swedish friends either, since they didn't have cash (and it mostly wasn't…