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Comment by beardyw | Hacker News Reader

I live in the UK and have one wrinkled £10 note and a pound coin, both for emergencies. I almost never use cash. What is stopping the US moving to that?

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.. the desire to not have every single transaction traceable in a society where such activities can be easily exploitable by all and sundry to screw you financially, forever .. ?

Yeah, I think you're going to need to break this hyperbole down a little bit for everyone.

With current electronic transactions all your movements are tracked and stored, and copied (in Europe) to a large number of entities - which do not have credentials for being (en)trusted. That is a "you MUST be joking" scenario.

Criminals have something to hide. Subjects have nothing to hide. Men have everything to hide.

Wasn't there the example of the Canadian government freezing people's bank accounts for participating in the trucker protests?

You might (possibly correctly) say that your country is nowhere near Canada on that spectrum, but things can change over time.

Well there are people who still always want to pay in cash, albeit with a sigh from behind the counter, but they are often even more grey haired and doddery than me.

And I can see exactly where my money has been spent down to the last coffee.

Those who have no choice than to pay by cash are the most disadvantaged in society, and my greatest concern is for them.

Can you explain where you're coming from?

Is it crime?

Or just a desire to have some resilience from having banks accidentally screw over your entire live just because Mercury is in retrograde.

Its crime, yes its a factor - but its also the fact that I don't need the bank analyzing whether I'm buying too much of something they consider an indicator for poor financial security, and then using that data in their interest calculations.

That does happen, and its not okay, but happy little decadent consumers agree to it because, convenience.

But we have moved to that. I don’t remember the last time I used cash. Maybe to pay at a farm stand in the country.

Desire for basic privacy and freedom?

I'm not in US but I refuse to shop anywhere that doesn't take cash.

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