> We've always had anonymous money: Cash and money laundering
Consider that if the money was truly anonymous, we wouldn't be able to use serial numbers to track down who used it.
Consider that if the money was truly anonymous, we wouldn't be able to use serial numbers to track down who used it.
People have used anonymous money in the form of coins for millennia. It wasn't until the 1860s that the first one-dollar bill in the U.S. was printed with serial numbers. For ~95% of the time that money has existed, it has been what you would call "truly anonymous."
If you go back to pre-coin history and use weights of silver as opposed to minted or hammered coins, you're looking at maybe 153 years of serial numbers vs. about 5,000 years of non-serial numbers. "Truly anonymous money" is the historic norm; the current situation with numbers printed on paper/linen/plastic is something of a historical aberration.
Even if the bank gives me a tracked 20, I can easily "launder" it by using it to buy something. Now I have $19 in anonymous cash and stick of gum.