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Comment by mberning | Hacker News Reader

Horrible take. 10k is a pittance. Small business owners, farmers, people buying and selling vehicles, etc. It’s not a large amount of money. If you go down to the apple store and buy a couple well specced computers the bill is going to be over 10k.

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I very much doubt there are money people that walk into an apple store with 10k in their back pocket to pay for some computers.

Same with farmers. How many farmers living in this modern age are walking around with 10k in their back pockets? In the vast majority of cases, I would argue that people just use their bank account for such large payments these days.

> I would argue that people just use their bank account for such large payments these days.

Yup, and now they are _forced_ to. Its a single point of failure. One which the government conveniently has control over.

I'm surprised the HN crowd isn't grasping this more clearly. Backups are important.

The government has control over that in any case. For instance a judge can force a liability on you.

> Its a single point of failure

You can have more than one bank account.

The point is that you cannot do any meaningful amount of business if “the system” prevents you from banking, or malfunctions in some way that locks you out. Or more insidiously, if someone in power prevents you from banking because they do not like what you have to say. There is no longer a gray market relief valve. All unbanked business activity is illegal.

The recent trucker protest in Canada, had just this happen.

People locked out of their accounts. For protesting!

Blocking domestic and international commerce, and more importantly access for emergency services, goes a little beyond just "protesting" as most people see it, and it also probably isn't protected by whatever right to assemble/protest people have in Canada, if any(?).

>Of course you have the right to protest against the government >Nooooo not like that!!

Which is it?

At least in the US, the right is of "peaceable assembly", not a blank check to break laws.

The Ottawa protests were as peaceful as large protests get. They put a hat on a statue and the media called it “defacing statues”.

Blocking domestic and international commerce, and more importantly access for emergency services, goes a little beyond just "protesting" as most people see it,

Blocking emergency services is a very, very weird thing. Loads of protests do so. Parades do so.

That said, the problem isn't "was it a protest or not", the problem is judicial oversight was suspended, by employing what used to be called The War Measures Act.

Yes, only some of the powers were used. Yet those powers were used to bypass all legal and constitutional protections, and snoop into bank accounts, and freeze bank accounts, again... all without judicial oversight.

None of these people had been charged. To this day, most of those who had their bank accounts snooped in, and frozen (and later thawed), were never charged with a crime.

This is not possible in Canada, legally, without using one of the most powerful laws at our disposal. And regardless of the protest length, or type, it wasn't an emergency.

Blockades at the borders, and in Alberta were cleared without issue, before the act was declared.

Lastly, compared to protests in some other democratic countries? It was nothing. Meaningless. Tiny. Trivial.

But again, most importantly -- agree or not, like or not, even if you hated those truckers, having the government declare an emergency, for something that was not? Then having that government use those powers to bypass the judicial branch?

Insane. Wrong. Horrifying.

Such laws should absolutely not be used to punish your political rivals!

Bank accounts as we know them may not exist in the world of CBDCs because they can just be held by the fed directly, which is their design.

For most businesses, cash is a far more likely point of failure.

Taking in large amounts of cash is ripe for robbery. It's also why a lot of places don't accept $100's after a certain time and etc because it gets really risky for the employees.

Government has control of your cash just as well. If the central bank decides your bills are not recognized anymore, or that they want to print 1000% more of it, your cash value changes.

Which is Mutually Assured Destruction. I can't think of many occasions in which financial elites would destroy their own wealth in pursuit of political (?) goals.

The one incident I can think of didn't end well.

It depends on how they got their income in the first place. My family are dairy farmers and frequently trade cattle at local auctions. This is still a cash based society (rural Ireland), it does not take many heads of cattle to make up 10k, many other deals are done informally (e.g. my grandfather buying cows from a neighbor without auction) with a value that is of that order. The money may hit a bank account if something more formal needs to be bought (insurance, new machinery etc) but those are not all that common.

As a child I would always remember my grandfather carrying (at least in the house) large rolls of bills.

This is one of those edge cases where you have a way of doing business that hasn't moved forward and 'with the times'.

Unfortunately when you don't move with the times, it ultimately catches up with you and forces your hand eventually. No matter how hard you try.

The ones that commit tax fraud

I did exactly this at the Apple store for a 5k+ purchase. I do these things out of principle to make it harder to create profiles and support cash. It is the same why I prefer https over http.

No matter how hard you try, cash is dying. If it's a good thing or not is another debate but you're not supporting anything by paying in cash.

You're simply prolonging the death with no benefit of doing so other than to pat yourself on the back.

We just need to prolong it enough until we can prolong it a bit further, ad infinitum.

A new Macbook Pros can easily be over $6k (16", upgraded ram, upgraded hard drive, etc). $10k is not that much money. People do pay for these laptops in cash.

A phone has cost over $1k for years. Think of the present rate of inflation. $10k is nothing, particularly a decade from now. Then think of two decades from now and this silly law still on the books.

Very few (if any) Apple stores will accept that amount in cash. A lot of stores and businesses (also the likes of Carrefour and Albert Heijn) have been phasing out setups needed for cash payments. Even if you find a way to pay cash, it will be on a separate (long and slow) queue or they will need to exceptionally call their supervisor to handle the payment.

They do accept that amount of cash. They do a dance where they take your cash, convert it to Apple gift cards at about $1k (or $2k?) each, then they apply those gift cards towards your purchase. Afterwards, they throw away the gift cards.

Large denomination Cash handling for legitimate businesses has been a hassle for a long time already. I’m not sure how many businesses want to handle large cash amounts.

You can’t even buy a car in cash here any more.

Americans aren't used banking systems that work.

Americans don’t use such large sums of cash in transactions very frequently, do others?

The only large exception I am aware of is dispensaries because banks don’t want potential drug money laundering charges.

A significant portion of the US population uses cash for everything. Only about 2/3 of Americans use traditional banks for their finances. Most of them are poor, so they're not making many transactions over 10k, but those people will pay for cars, rent, etc in cash.

I feel like we have decent banking here…?

Isn't it dangerous to give out your bank account number in the US, people can withdraw from it if they know it or something?

You'd also need the routing number for the bank as well as the name on the account, at a minimum. And what you're thinking of is ACH, which goes between institutions, not between individuals.

The routing and account numbers are on all paper checks you write. You can use them to set up ACH transfers to/from that account, with pretty minimal checks.

Those transfers have to go through heavily regulated institutions, however, all of whom have strict KYC laws. Of all the ways to try and steal someone's money, this would be fairly low on my list.

USA doesn't even have a standard way of normal humans transferring money electronically to each other, leading to a plethora of competing apps that try to solve this.

There are upsides and downsides. Having an additional degree of separation is nice when I'm doing transactions with strangers. I prefer to use Venmo instead of Zelle for precisely that reason.

The US has a couple of ways that normal humans can transfer money electronically to each other. But they're old school (and require bank accounts) and that's why there are newer systems that people use instead.

Neither them nor Europeans are used to less benign governments.

And the problem with good governments (and fair elections and other properties of decent democracies) is that they can accidentally let bad actors in (populism is one helluva drug for the masses), and bad actors may attempt to undermine the institutions, turning democracies into kleptocracies and dictatorships if they succeed.

Then all those safeguards in the name of all that's good become perfect tools for abuse in the name of all the control over whoever dares to oppose the established order.

> Neither them nor Europeans are used to less benign governments.

I'm pretty sure Europeans have heard of Hitler and Stalin and their ilk.

Honestly, I feel like so much of the crypto space is due to that. Even in Brazil we have a pretty simple inter-bank transfer system used by virtually everybody. You just have to know an email or a phone.

Strangely, Americans also live in a country where the police can just steal your cash without charging you with a crime. They call it forfeiture.

So are you from Europe? Or do you know anyone in Europe who has made such a transaction in physical cash?

It’s fairly common in Poland when building a house or renovating an apartment.

A guy bought a house in berlin. In cash. Actual cash. Nobody suspected anything because in Germany, cash is king. Of course there was money laundering, tax avoidance and all the common suspects on it.

There is no way I'm going to show up to buy a vehicle with that kind of cash on me, it's asking for a robbery.

The last time I saw someone use that much cash it was to buy a house in Amsterdam in the mid 80's, and even then it was frowned upon by the notary and the recipient. The notary made them deposit it into their bank account first and probably had to report the deal as 'unusual'.

I’d imagine it’s fairly unlikely you’re paying cash for that large amount, most people would choose a more convenient form of transfer surely?

How much time is wasted in these transactions just counting and verifying the money?

Also what if lots of people decided to transact like this. It’s not like the banks have paper to back all your deposits, they’d need time to go physically print paper if it became that popular a medium.

The solution is to make larger denominations, not ban cash sales. But then the government would give up power, so that isn't going to happen.

US dollars say explicitly "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE", it would be ridiculous to say 'under $10000'.

Once the government has control what's to stop them doing like China has proposed, and make your virtual currency have velocity, meaning if you spend it today, it's worth $1, next week .9, and next month .5?

Note it says "debts". Most retail situations have no debt because you must pay before you receive the item.

If you break down any transaction, it has three components. First, there is the agreement to trade some goods and services for some price. At this moment two debts are created. One is to deliver the money. The other is to deliver the goods and services. The 2nd and 3rd component is the delivery of the money and the delivery of the goods and services.

If you for a candy bar in cash all three happen at the same time. When you buy something and pay later, or pay up front and get something later, it’s easier to see the different components. When you buy stocks via a broker, it’s even more apparent.

>Once the government has control what's to stop them doing like China has proposed, and make your virtual currency have velocity, meaning if you spend it today, it's worth $1, next week .9, and next month .5?

Isn't this literally what inflation is?

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