I have never payed more than say $3k in cash. It just doesn’t make sense to do so.
Privacy shouldn’t exist for financial transactions. It makes it easier to launder money or hide wealth. There is no other use for “dark” financial transactions.
There is no tyranny in making finances of everyone transparent. It doesn’t force anyone to make different choices about WHAT to do with their money. It makes what people pay for auditable.
This makes a very tenuous assumption that government is always justified in any money it seeks to take away or trace, or that nobody ever has a good and even moral reason for hiding their money from a hungry state.
That's an awfully narrow view of reality or even the long history of governments becoming downright predatory.
Yes, privacy absolutely should exist for financial transactions. It's flat out naive, or elitist and authoritarian to believe that the state deserves a constant right to know where every penny you have goes and how to confiscate it whenever it pleases.
Especially on bullion items, there's very narrow margins, and I'd expect a high transaction-reversal risk (i. e. demanding refunds or charging back if the price of gold dropped after purchase).
In practice, this means that many dealers will charge a higher price for using non-cash payment systems. At least in the US, some dealers will even be explicitly cash-only.
Six one-ounce gold coins would get you over USD/EUR 10,000, and isn't that exotic of a purchase in that context.
A documented payment system might be viable for that scenario, if it was completely zero-cost to merchants and consumers, although some dealers might still not want the reversal risks. However, conjuring that would require major state intervention.
Let me quote someone smart on privacy topic:
> Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Cash = privacy. I dont want to get stripped from privacy by anyone for any reason.
You are not allowed to hide such transactions by law in the country where I am from.