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> In his home country, you couldn't trust the banks, so people hid their money. Of course that kind of thinking is silly in Australia, but good luck explaining that to someone with war-trauma.

Not too long ago we saw the Canadian government freeze bank accounts of people for protesting the Covid measures. Don’t think that it cannot happen in your country.

The naysayers and poo pooers are finding out why Bitcoin was invented, the hard way.

I'm sure the hospital will accept doge any day now

I said Bitcoin, not crypto. Big difference (uncensorable, difficult to confiscate money versus censorable centralized fiat clones).

What hospitals accept BTC again?

Any hospital that takes visa takes Bitcoin.

Nope. It can get exchanged at some current rate; if they allow it.

Those are not the same thing.

For people not familiar with Canadian politics, this summary missed some important nuance. Bank accounts were frozen for some people who donated money to support an illegal occupation of part of Canada's capital city, Ottawa. The occupation was a mix of people protesting COVID measures and others demanding that Justin Trudeau resign.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-fin...

Yes, the people with power to declare stuff illegal can always say that whatever you’re doing is illegal before freezing your bank account. Was your comment meant to reassure me?

It wasn't, no. It was meant to clarify for other readers that people didn't have their bank accounts frozen for protesting COVID; they had their bank accounts frozen for financially supporting or participating in an illegal occupation of a city centre.

Your point stands that governments/courts decide what is illegal and that they have the power to freeze bank accounts when those accounts are used to fund illegal activities.

it is worth remembering that occupy wallstreet was also declared 'an illegal occupation of a city centre'

This is one of those 'it's ok when we do it' scenarios. Where its okay when occupy wallstreet, Antifa or another leftist cause occupy somewhere 'illegally', but not those damn truckers.

And if someone illegally occupies the front seat of a bus, or a diner counter? Is it also okay to keep them from something that belongs to them then?

If someone illegally occupied your house, would you be okay with them getting fined for it?

why do you mention fine here? the thread is about blocking access to your whole account...

Of course! After they are convicted of a crime, following a fair and public trial, or guilty plea

> Bank accounts were frozen for some people who donated money to support an illegal occupation of part of Canada's capital city, Ottawa. The occupation was a mix of people protesting COVID measures and others demanding that Justin Trudeau resign.

There's certainly ... nuance you're taking for granted in declaring a mix of political protest and political protest illegal.

We're getting pretty off topic, but it wasn't what they were protesting that was illegal, it was how they did it. For a US comparison, First Amendment rights don't include a right to occupy city streets for weeks, even if you're doing it to protest the government.

> For a US comparison, First Amendment rights don't include a right to occupy city streets for weeks, even if you're doing it to protest the government.

That’s interesting to hear, because a group of political activist have occupied a couple of city blocks in my city for a couple of weeks, declared independence, intimidated and harassed residents and businesses, and murdered a bunch of people there, but nobody has ever been arrested or prosecuted for any of that (including murders). Maybe the Canadians have heard the story of CHAZ and thought they their government will also be as lenient. Turns out that they were very wrong.

What they did was illegal, therefore it’s totally justified for the state to bypass the existing justice system and just ask the banks to them shut down, right?

Was occupy wall street not a protest? Should bank accounts have been frozen to donators to that cause?

>Bank accounts were frozen for some people who donated money to support an illegal occupation of part of Canada's capital city, Ottawa.

Were they a designated criminal group at the time of donation? It seems strange to go after the donors rather than freezing the bank accounts of the recipients. The way I see it, there are only two possibilities:

1. the groups in question were declared criminal organizations, and therefore their bank accounts should be frozen and future donations should be blocked/banned

2. the groups in question weren't declared criminal organizations, and therefore it should be okay to donate to them.

>1. the groups in question were declared criminal organizations, and therefore their bank accounts should be frozen and future donations should be blocked/banned

Should criminals be denied all access to the financial system?

Even if the criminal is not receiving money for criminal cause?

Do criminals have the right to buy food?

they do, but that right also comes with responsibility, which by virtue of them committing a crime, they have to answer for. If they escape the authorities, freezing their financial accounts is not completely out of the ordinary, and forces them to confront the authorities.

So yes, they have the right to buy food, but also the obligation to answer for their crimes in an open court. Can't have one without the other.

But if they haven't been to court yet, then they should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Is it ok to prevent an innocent person from buying food?

Are they criminals without a trial?

> Bank accounts were frozen for some people who donated money

That seems like an incredibly disproportionate response, and makes me think that Canadian banks really are unsafe

To add more important nuance, people had their bank accounts frozen without them being convicted or even charged with a crime.

Please read the article and avoid the spread of more misinformation. Donor names were NOT provided by the RCMP. The frozen accounts were holding funds that were donated:

> In a statement released Monday, the RCMP said it only provided banks with the names of convoy organizers and the owners of trucks who had refused to leave the protest area. The RCMP said it did not release an exhaustive list of every donation made.

> "At no time did we provide a list of donors to financial institutions," the statement said.

The only reports of accounts being indiscriminately frozen came from hearsay:

> Some Conservative MPs have said constituents have reported that their bank accounts were frozen after they made donations to the convoy protest through one of its crowdfunding campaigns.

Most of the reports were fictitious constituents that "lost bank account access to buy groceries". Nobody was able to independently confirm any of these claims.

It sure was fun hearing people in Canada complaining about their first amendment rights being violated.

I didn't even know anybody was trying to remove the right for Manitoba to be a province of Canada.

> In his home country, you couldn't trust the banks, so people hid their money. Of course that kind of thinking is silly in Australia

If I had to choose between the two positions, one of implicit trust and another of implicit mistrust towards banks, I would consider the latter choice to be the saner and safer one.

The push for no cash is real, and it’s becoming more real with every constriction of cash transactions and with every CBDC trial.

As the BIS chairman said, the goal is total knowledge of every financial transaction. Fanfares about financial inclusiveness seem to me little more than marketing quips, the actual goal being zero financial privacy.

Now, one may wonder, why would a law-abiding citizen require any modicum of privacy - have they anything to hide? After all, “transparency” is a nice notion, right?

I think the answer is that privacy is a fundamental right, something that all the scaremongering about criminal enterprises is used to corrode.

Not to mention that “transparency for thee but not for me” isn’t real transparency.

There is similar law in Ukraine for quite a long time. Everyone just ignore this law..

I bought flat for cash in USD not even in local currency. Car were bought in cash in severL transactions to be below limit. Part of payments were in foreing currency.

It only consumers who became affected. Less protection from law in case of fraud. By documents car price were 10 times less You pay.

Meanwhile this law has not prevent any corruption or apply any incovients to local barons.

The documented price is important when you have to return the car 3 days later because it is badly broken and you were scammed. It happened to a friend of mine. He was screwed because the seller offered to return all his money based on the price on the invoice.

Well, let's not forget that USD is the actual true "национальная валюта" (national currency) of Ukraine. /s

On a serious note, it is almost impossible for me to declare and legalize my hard-earned money while living in Ukraine, so I hope that this EU law will not be effective, just like previous efforts were not.

Unfortunately we wouldn't move forward as a society if we didn't do things that affected people that didn't want to progress with modern ways of living.

Modern ways of living is more akin to using toilets. Cash isn’t an unnecessary artifact of ancient civilization that impedes progress.

Digitizing cash has moved civilization forward in ways we could never have dreamed of.

Indeed, I can’t imagine that any marketers from the past could have imagined the vast troves of data about consumers that are available to them today.

Why do you need man in middle in your payments?

Having a man in the middle of payments adds more benefits that it does cons.

So you would make payments totally dependent on: - eletricity - smartphone - data signal - bank account - no privacy

Can you imagine that old people, homeless or even small kids that want buy a candy will not be able to buy anything?

Keep your benefits for yourself.

This. There's an energy crisis going on, and as late as a few days ago, Finnish news warned that there's a non-zero chance of rolling two-hour power outages as early as next week. If that happens, cash and paper invoices will be crucial to keep society running properly.

> Of course that kind of thinking is silly in Australia

I don't think that's obviously silly. Look at Canada (which has similar values as Australia) where the government seized money from private bank accounts just for protesting or donating to someone who protested.

> If a ban prevented him from paying for that surgery with cash, he just wouldn't get the surgery

He can go to a bank with the cash and do a wire transfer.

He’d rather not get life-saving surgery.

I don’t trust banks either. I don’t trust the Canadian government anymore as of last winter either.

But if I need surgery and I have the means then I make it happen. I figure out the banking system and I get surgery.

A lot of eu countries have a threshold of how much you can pay in cash, and it works just fine. No one is missing hospital treatment because of it and even illiterate folks can use banks and open accounts.

Agreed. It's tried. We know it works. What are we even debating?

Well, tell that to Russian war emigrants. Opening bank account in EU for non-residents is a hard endeavor right now. Those who did it before the hot part of war started in February often finding their accounts frozen and literally were unable to receive their paychecks.

But if they have emigrated, they are by definition resident?

There is significant (up to 9 months, from friends' experience) gap between fleeing to the country and getting legal residency (work permit, visa D, blue card). But even that doesn't make opening bank account much easier, there are banks that doesn't open accounts for holders of Russian passports (or even Russian names, believe me or not). Also, like I said, lots of EU banks froze or restricted accounts of Russian citizens in Feb 2022, even if those individuals were legally in EU for months or even years.

Bottom line: it's surprisingly easy to become unbanked in EU.

> Bottom line: it's surprisingly easy to become unbanked in EU.

If you move money from a country that threatens europe with nukes. But i see your point. The issue is how can banks separate genuine refugees from people taking advantage of the situation and trying to move illegally acquired money?

Not only Europe, the whole world, but that's not important for the discussion.

There's almost no way just to open account at all, to put some cash there, have a plastic card and use it to buy tickets or pay for Netflix subscription. Moving money is a separate quest, that I can tell from the first hand experience.

I am not saying that banks should have some kind of obligation to open account for everyone. I am just showcasing the importance of cash transactions.

To answer you question, I believe banks have that procedure they called KYC/AML, that's how.

And being unbanked means, for example, inability to buy property, which is, in turn, may be a condition of getting residency in the first place. Not everyone possess IT skills to get work visa.

I can confirm this. I devoted a section of my website (about immigration) to immigrant-friendly banks.

Many banks have restrictions that make it hard for immigrants to open an account, even though they're entitled to one by law.

For example, many banks use the same ID verification services, and those don't recognise Indian passports. Others refuse Americans because they're a bureaucratic nightmare to deal with. Others require a registered address which is hard to get without a bank account. Others require a residence permit or even permanent residency. You usually need a bank account before you have either.

Bureaucracy gets messy at the edges.