[irjustin]

China was the leader in the push to pure cashless society. Cash still works, but only in small amounts.

Lots of HNews'ers claim cash is the only way to keep your freedoms, but that simply glosses over the fact that even if you have piles of cash under your bed, you can't do anything meaningful if the government decides to prevent/limit banks from accepting cash deposits - say in a 5 year timeframe.

After a while, businesses will simply stop accepting cash.

[nix23]

>After a while, businesses will simply stop accepting cash.

So when you loose you smartphone/cards you cant buy another one, open your car, pay for a taxi or even sleep in a hotel because there is no chance to go home?

Switzerland had 3 complete blackouts (1-2 month ago) for paying digital. So the sellers had to make list (and hope you come back later to pay it.). If your country just accept digital, you trust fully on digital infrastructure...i think we all know what a good idea that is.

[StanislavPetrov]

>Switzerland had 3 complete blackouts

Numerous places regularly have rolling blackouts now when power consumption is too high. And then there are the extended, involuntary blackouts that happen several times a year around the country due to hurricanes/blizzards ect. 100% Digital currency is never going to work in practice, now matter how badly authoritarian governments want to implement it.

[nix23]

Well power is one part but those 3 where outages from the transaction provider alone.

[jjgreen]

I don't hear people saying cash protects freedom, but is does protect privacy. Can it be taken away, yes of course, if people don't care about privacy (and most don't) and don't use it then it can, and that seems to be a project in progress.

[brigandish]

Since the lockdowns and people being barred from shopping etc there have definitely been people saying cash protects freedom. Privacy is a type of freedom anyway.

[_milgram224]

This is exactly correct, and also exactly why blockchain-based cryptocurrency has utterly failed to deliver on its promises to bring freedom from the tyrannies of fiat currency. In fact, the technology has been pivotal in ushering in this CBDC madness. Returning to the gold standard was always the best solution available, and we just ignored it to our own peril. It preserves both privacy and universal acceptability, which provides the user far more freedom than any other available alternative.

[armatav]

Except the whole point is that there’s a digital gold standard now.

But in this case you can’t modify the gold-ledger to perform what is effectively fractional reserve gold-banking with Bitcoin.

Give it 30 years, there’s no stopping math.

[Schroedingersat]

Returning to the gold standard is just a very fast way of handing over everything to the people with enough resources to make the value of gold shift.

As opposed to our current system which is a moderately fast way

[irjustin]

Sure, but the conclusion hasn't changed.

Your privacy is lost, your freedom is lost. Whatever you believed cash to be able to do is gone when the central government decides to block it.

That's all I'm saying.

[nix23]

>freedom, but is does protect privacy

Those are overlapping themes...and you can add safety in to mix.

[retrac]

The inconvenience of "my piles of money will no longer be legal tender in five years" and "all of my money is locked in accounts I cannot access starting immediately" are in entirely different categories.

I experienced this directly, when the electronic payment system recently collapsed in my part of Canada for ~2 days. I fortunately had a small amount of cash on me. Without it, I would have been unable to buy lunch, top-up my nearly expired phone plan, and then buy a train ticket and go about my normal day. It was also fortunate for my friend, who I lent $20. Can't take cash out at the ATM either obviously. I would have been stuck at home all day. I wouldn't have been able to give a small amount of money to my friend. Being able to lock people out of their bank accounts is far more specific, and disabling, than regulations on cash could be.

[jpalomaki]

Some businesses are already going cashless (here in Finland, have understood it is also happening on Sweden).

As most people anyways pay card/phone/app, it’s not worth of trouble to deal with cash. Handling cash gives you security problems (robberies) and adds costs (need to regularly take money to bank).

[baandam]

I am pushing 50 and the idea of America becoming cashless in my lifetime is not going to happen.

There is no way our law makers are going to want to lose access to cash. No one wants to get a bribe or conduct a shady deal in a highly traceable digital currency in the US.

Not to mention, we can't even get rid of 100% utterly useless pennies. They are basically a form of government printed litter that I am not sure is even worth a homeless person's time to be bothered with.