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EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments

patrick-breyer.de

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Re: EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments

#45

Post by b112 »

lxgr wrote: post #34
hexo wrote: post #24

The cash limit now is like 5k euros. It sucks but the new cap is outrageous.

I'm a big fan of anonymous payments as a component of a resilient democracy, but to me, there's an amount cap where the tradeoff starts getting skewed from that to facilitating money laundering, tax evasion and other bad things. I can imagine dozens of good use cases for If there's real demand for it, I think we should come up with a technical solution that e.g. provides one-sided privacy like GNU Taler (taxation usu…

The thing is, limits like this are never, ever raised.

40 years ago Canada got rid of the $1000 and $500 note. In all that time, the idea of bringing the $500 back has never been floated.

Yet soon, $100 will be worth $20 back then. I already find myself using $100s all the time, I used to fill my car for $25 in the 80s, now it's $80. Groceries are the same, I used to buy $30 per week, now it's over $100.

As time progresses, you'll have to carry a briefcase to buy gas or groceries.

So 5000 may seem like a good limit, but in 20 years you may not be able to buy groceries, or get gas, or buy a computer with cash or record keeping.

I always pay cash for my hardware. I don't need the store to link my serial number to my credit card number. I'm already using MAC addresses off of old ISA NIC cards.

Re: EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments

#46

Post by arp242 »

> More than 90% of responding citizens spoke out against such a step.

It was a web survey with fairly low numbers: 30,317 in total, which is very little for all of the EU.[1]

And of course the results of this will be biased towards people who object to this. If there had been a meaningful number of respondents then it might be a signal of sorts, but as it stands with 28,784 people protesting this is completely meaningless. You can find those numbers on almost any proposal.

Never mind the responses are almost exclusively from France, Germany, and Austria. All of Ireland is represented by just 14 people. Netherlands 26. Etc.

> According to an ECB survey up to 10% of citizens use cash even for amounts greater than 10.000 € (e.g. buying cars)

I can't find this survey. I can find some ECB surveys about cash, but nothing that confirms this. The phrasing "up to" makes me suspicious, especially since the previous claim is already a misrepresentation.

Also note that buying a car is rarely anonymous as it is, because registration and/or insurance is usually mandatory. I don't think there are EU members where this is not the case?

[1]: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2017-07/st...

Re: EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments

#47

Post by arp242 »

b112 wrote: post #45
lxgr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of anonymous payments as a component of a resilient democracy, but to me, there's an amount cap where the tradeoff starts getting skewed from that to facilitating money laundering, tax evasion and other bad things. I can imagine dozens of good use cases for If there's real demand for it, I think we should come up with a technical solution that e.g. provides one-sided privacy like GNU Taler (taxation usu…

The thing is, limits like this are never, ever raised. 40 years ago Canada got rid of the $1000 and $500 note. In all that time, the idea of bringing the $500 back has never been floated. Yet soon, $100 will be worth $20 back then. I already find myself using $100s all the time, I used to fill my car for $25 in the 80s, now it's $80. Groceries are the same, I used to buy $30 per week, now it's over $100. As time prog…

I carried wads of cash when I lived in Indonesia, because card acceptance is so unreliable it's easier to just pay by cash. Bills of 100,000 (~€6.50) are the largest, and while prices are lower than in Europe or Canada, they're not necessarily that much lower for a lot of things. It's a bit awkward, but doable I guess shrug.

I paid 6 million in cash for my scooter, and you can imagine what that looked like. Upshot is I felt very rich and like one of those fellas in those rap videos throwing around money.

Re: EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments

#48

Post by arp242 »

Drakim wrote: post #18
louwrentius wrote: post #7

> Anonymous cash payments over €3,000 will be banned in commercial transactions. Cash payments over €10,000 will even be completely banned in business transactions. And anonymous payments in cryptocurrencies to wallets operated by providers (hosted wallets) will be prohibited even for minimum amounts without a threshold. For the regular person, there is no issue here. Cash is still fine, anonymous payments are possib…

One issue I know that drives many NSFW artists to crypto payments is that things like paypal won't service them.

Yeah, that type of thing is a problem. I feel that anyone operating a legal business should be able to receive payments. I don't know what the best way to achieve that would be: make it illegal for payment processors to refuse customers registered with the chamber of commerce? Set up a community bank to handle this? Something else? Idk.

That said, one of my gripes with a lot of this cryptostuff is that people want it to both be recognized as real money, but also not be beholden to any regulation they don't like. Can't have both.

Re: EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments

#49

Post by brsc2909 »

arp242 wrote: post #46

> More than 90% of responding citizens spoke out against such a step. It was a web survey with fairly low numbers: 30,317 in total, which is very little for all of the EU.[1] And of course the results of this will be biased towards people who object to this. If there had been a meaningful number of respondents then it might be a signal of sorts, but as it stands with 28,784 people protesting this is completely meanin…

I'm Irish, usually pretty clued in on things. But had no idea this was actually being put through. (I suspected it would be eventually) I would definitely be objecting.

Re: EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments

#50

Post by friend_and_foe »

ktosobcy wrote: post #43

I'm curious about all the outraged comments - when was the last time you used cash and when was the last time the amount was above the limit? Or the butt hurt outrage is just on principle and the sheeply is already not giving a duck? ;-)

A few months ago I bought a car with cash I pulled out of my bank. It was well above that limit. Nothing nefarious, just a car.

These laws aren't about limiting crime, or even about surveillance or tax compliance really. They're about ensuring that you cannot do business with peers and can only do it with corporations.

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