EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by literalAardvark » Sat, Mar 23, 2024, 11:14 PM UTC

friend_and_foe wrote: post #79

literalAardvark wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And exactly how is this limiting your ability to do business with peers more than pulling cash out of the bank did? Log in to internet banking, ask the seller for their account, enter the number, press send. It's even less effort than pulling cash, and only vaguely more easily traceable.

Because every single transaction, even ones with peers, involves a multinational intermediary payment processor. Besides cryptocurrencies, all digital payments, every single one of them, is doing business with a corporation.

It is doing business with a corporation, but it's not not doing business with peers at all.

Also, if you have any common sense you have to do business with the corp anyway to do your withdrawal.

I can see how it would be annoying when a lumberjack in British Columbia wants to sell his truck for a mattress full of dollars, but in the real world the money was already in a bank, so not doing business with that bank wasn't an option anyway.

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

#82

Post by hakfoo » Mon, Mar 25, 2024, 3:57 AM UTC

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…

The US began withdrawing their $500/1000/5000/10000 notes in the 1960s as well; the last issues were nominally before WWII.

There was some discussion around the turn of the century that the introduction of the 200/500 Euro notes might impact the USD's status as the dominant "notes in a coffee can buried in the yard" store of wealth for the developing world, but it never went anywhere.

It is interesting that this seems to be a remarkable amount of faith in inflation being a managed slow-walk-- if you had Weimar-style inflation, any fixed limit would be blown through in weeks. Although, perhaps that's a secondary objective there-- if an economy with high paper-trail requirements starts to overheat, pinching the monitoring system might provide additional leverage.

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

#83

Post by ktosobcy » Wed, Mar 27, 2024, 12:58 AM UTC

friend_and_foe wrote: post #50

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.

so... you left a trace at bank, then signed a contract that was filed to authorities an the seller deposit the cash. Awesome way to fly under the radar, clappity clap to your wise conduct!