Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexb_ | Hacker News Reader

You can track where a bill was distributed, what bank it came from, who withdrew that cash, but past that you can't track any of the transactions that happen. The transactions being tracked is the important part here.

View on HN

As mentioned in comment you replied too, both cash withdrawals & deposits are scanned — and most cash is only used once between receipt and being spent before entering banks again. For small volume of cash, might be possible to remain anonymous, but for large volumes, it would be extremely hard without there being a cost to doing so and might even be technically money laundering, which is illegal. Most retail locations will not break bills without transactions and will not take unusually large bills for transactions. When combined with other methods of surveillance, such as asset tracking, location-data, security cameras, etc, it’s virtually impossible to stay anonymous at any significant scale.

Core point is like blockchain, people do not realize how traceable cash is and many falsely assume it’s completely anonymous, which it is not.

If a store makes daily deposits and those serial numbers are scanned, you can narrow down the transaction to a day. Security footage will show the transaction happening. It's a bit of work, but if that happens to you twice there aren't too many people who visited the same two stores those two days. They now know what you look like and can find your other movements across other security cameras. Bingo, you were tracked via your cash.

Unless you're also an expert at disguise and also avoiding security cameras to and from the stores. Every time you buy something.

Volume of work required really depends on where money is spent. Many retailers not only scan all faces, but if another method of identifying the customer is not available will use third-party services or government partnerships to identity the customers and tie them to a cash transactions. Few retailers even scan large bills real-time at the point of sale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com