Are EU banks just mass surveillance devices? | Hacker News Reader

Are EU banks just mass surveillance devices?

46 pointswojciii92 comments

A recent encounter with my bank (in Denmark) it made my realize that banks became mass surveillance devices for the different states disguised by fighting anti money-laundering.

It might just be me and my situation but as a customer I can't refuse to provide information about any of my transactions because the bank will cancel my accounts as required by our local law. I find this quite insane.

Is this a common EU behaviour for banks for all of EU? How did it become like this and why is no one protesting laws like this?

Is your implementation of this law (Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD)) different from the Danish one? Are you allowed to refuse to provide details about transactions without consequences?

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There isn't a bank in the World that will not comply with local laws.

The AMLD is not secret. You can read it here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...

The AMLD is not dissimilar to any other anti-money laundering regulation in the World, including the USA, Switzerland and others.

If you have large cash flows, you will be asked by banks to explain the nature of them to ensure they are not illicit. If you are not prepared to explain that, the bank is not under any duty to do business with you, and depending on the nature of your transactions may be required to report them to law enforcement. If you do not answer to law enforcement, they will likely start an investigation to ensure you're not involved in organised crime.

Once your bank or law enforcement are happy you're not involved in organised crime, they'll leave you alone.

That's it.

If you are not involved in organised crime, but not prepared to explain that, yes, law enforcement are going to be interested and banks may not be prepared to do business with you. This has been the case for hundreds of years, it's only now there are more strict guidelines and rules around when suspicions should be raised and reported, and how they should be investigated.

I really don't see what the paranoia here is actually about.

I'm not talking about large cash flows here. I'm talking about any use of cash or transfers between family and friends. Everyone is guilty until proved otherwise.

I'm supposed to explain everything upon request and I can't say no. I don't find that reasonable.

About larger sums I don't have a problem with explaining where a certain transaction originated from, but it seems like banks want to trace money from their origin to destination. I don't find this reasonable.

I would expect this to be something that law enforcement would do.

> of cash or transfers between family and friends

one may say that this cousin is trying to wash/launder his cash from that drug trafficking, stealing, and by breaking it down to small amounts which he gives you in cash and then you 'venmo'/paypal to him via the banking system (I can give you more cringe-worthy scenarios but I hope you get the spirit on this one).

transfers between family (I assume the very immediate husband-wife that reasonably live together and have a household together). If you exchange €10k per month with various cousins, then sorry - not sorry - that smells fishy.

I don't suppose any bank is triggered by a €20 payment once per month (splitting pizza/drinks). But if you do this daily/regularly and the amounts (even seemingly small) add up to some €k, then again.. sorry - not sorry - that smells fishy.

I remember paying for a business service in the UK some years ago a couple of thousand (GBP) and the guy's bank got triggered because his payments were coming from within UK and this one came from the EU. Now, it is small amount, totally justifiable, but perhaps the guy has told his bank he only does business 'locally' and he's been getting multiple payments from abroad.

What is your actual problem? You send 10€ to your mother and your bank asks your where you got them from and why you send them to your mum?

If you withdraw cash regularly it will get you flagged by the bank and you will probably have to answer some questions. Answering wrongly will get you terminated as a client.

Edit: ok, it's crypto. See posts bellow somewhere

Can you say something about the sums? I (in germany) got my rent money every month from my parents while I was a student. No problem. I withdraw something like 100€ per week for bars, backeries and other small expenses and I never ever had any problems.

It buffles me that so many people are jumping to conclusions although you provided so little context.

If you have a cash inflow of 50k per month and withdrow that much, the bank may think you pay people in cash, avoiding taxes (like on construction sites). Which is totaly legit IMO. But again, you gave almost no context..

My current problem is crypto related, but the main problem is that banks care if you use cash and will ask about it. I find it unreasonable.

Many banks have been blocking crypto transactions because it's the main currency of choice for organised crime to move money across borders in the modern era. My bank has sent me a message telling me that they will block any transaction they think is related to crypto, and if I want to use crypto I'm free to use other banks. Simple.

I think that's their choice. They can make that decision, and it's fine.

Why do you think you are entitled to demand a private enterprise allows you to use their services in any way you see fit without asking you questions?

Worth noting that it's mandatory to interact with a private bank in order to participate in the modern society.

Want to receive your salary? You need a bank.

Do you need to pay rent? You need a bank.

Do you want to receive social welfare? You need a bank.

As unfortunate as it is, banks have become a dependency for modern day living.

I don't think that is true, at least not EU wide. I frequently (have to) use cash and I was never flagged by any of my banks or had to provide any sort of receipts for my transactions, not the local one and not the international ones. The only exception was the sale of my car, as the transaction exceeded 10k, I had to provide a short explanation, which in my case was the purchasing agreement.

I am really curious how this has proven to be an issue for you or if this is just another banks bad crpyto thing?

>Which is totaly legit IMO

I do not know any jurisdiction in which intentionally avoiding tax is legal.

I meant it's legit that the bank gets suspicous. Sorry I'm not a native speaker

Not really, in Italy as an example you can freely exchange up to 20K without raising any eyebrows.

have you considered buying some btc and send it to your family member? then they can convert it back to whatever that danish excuse for a currency is

I could do that but our currency is stable and btc is not. The currency is DKK. Some of us didn't want euro. :)

Also the other bank will also ask about the money received and the receiver will have to explain themselves.

The solution is to use crypto for everything instead of cash. Not realistic for some time based on my experiences.

I think it is a necessary evil if you will otherwise society would have a huge amount of uptick in criminal activities.

Also, banks have literally automated alarm and triggers in place to flag transactions for reviews.

Famous HSBC case comes to mind.

It raises the bar for crime to organizations with state sponsorship. Not sure that’s the outcome we’re looking for.

I tend to agree with you.

I have a bank account with about 5K euros on it. I have not touched it in 20 years (no deposits, no withdrawals). I earn tiny dividends on it each year.

I got a request from the bank 18 months ago to provide my tax return to them. I said no, why? They threatened me to confiscate my account (orally, on the phone). I replied I understand you need to ask info from me, by law. But if you don't get the information it's ok too, afaik. And there is no possible way that I can launder anything if the money is just sitting there.

I will see what happens...

It's now called "a dormant account" and they will take your money :)

Look it up for your country. You are about to lose that money :)

Friendly suggestion, stop playing hardball and give them the paperwork they seek. Dormant accounts can be either 'honest' ones (you) or accounts that remain open waiting to funnel the moneys from that fraud, etc.

You are most likely right.

In my dreams, I take the time going there in person with my ID, my anger and my badwill, and no tax return.

I get wildly upset in front of all other clients in a very lively way, just to laugh at them when they tell me I am "dormant" later.

I know, it makes no sense, just daydreaming...

Banks were mass surveillance devices before people talked about it on the internet. Probably before the internet in fact.

Why do you think cash is so popular among criminals? Maybe there are some new laws, but if the government suspects you of anything, they are definitely going to look at you bank account, and if you owe something, they can just take it. And they can definitely ask about any transaction, for tax reasons. And after all, that's how they got Al Capone.

I find it ironic how people go through ridiculous lengths to secure their communication as if they were some high profile targets for governments and on the other hand have no problem going all cashless, exposing their entire life through their bank account, all in one convenient location.

There is a flip side though. Banks are highly regulated. So while they will hand your life over if asked for in due process, they also have obligations of security and secrecy, so that they won't hand your life over without due process.

Not sure about other countries, but I ran into this in Romania. I was very surprised, I asked the bank teller about it and she said that generally people react pretty badly to this policy and give some very nasty obviously false information about transactions. I was withdrawing some money, so she told me that when asked about the reason for withdrwals they say stuff like: 'going to burn the whole pile of cash in my backyard', 'this is just for a photo shoot so I'll bring the money back' or the classic: 'going to spend it on prostitutes'. She also told me that half the people say 'I found the money walking down the street' when asked during deposits. It's very stupid and I'm not sure exactly how this can be used to build a proper suriveillance infrastructure. I mean it's not like I'm under oath when I provide 'details' about the transactions.

> or the classic: 'going to spend it on prostitutes'.

So you would infer, from OPs questions, that they have been entering dodgy, snarky, or perhaps even too honest reasons in their transaction forms?

Not judging here, but what if OP did in fact spend a few hundred on an escort service and was 100% sincere about that, to their bank. And then the bank did not believe it, because of the behavioral statu quo of other bank clients. And now the bank is all "You are not funny at all, tell us the truth". Now, the laws allow banks to thoroughly pursue their investigation until they conclude "This client actually spend a few hundred in prostitutes". And because of the statu quo (and the laws that originated it) everyone up the investigative chain gets to know about it.

I will be switching banks after this recent experience with Nykredit (the bank being a bit unreasonable in my situation).. and will remember to use same kind of answers. :)

The penalty is having to find a different financial institution.

They're also being weaponized as offensive tools now too. I don't know about the EU specifically, but if you supported the trucker protest in Ottawa, the full force of the state was used to lock your financial accounts and shut down all of your economic activity.

Unfortunate you are being downvoted - this is _exactly_ what happened.

Ordinary people who funded, in small amounts, a grassroots non-violent protest that the ruling political party disagreed with and found inconvenient had their bank accounts frozen.

They could not access their legally obtained funds, nor have additional legally obtained funds deposited.

There is no precedent for an action like this.

It is a good reminder of exactly what can and will happen with digital money - much like cloud video games, movies and music it is not actually yours - it can and will be revoked at any time by the platform for any reason.

This is DRM all over again.

Just did some light reading[1] on the Canada convoy protest, and my reaction is: good.

That was not a "peaceful protest." People were armed, ramming police vehicles, plotting political assassinations, and this was all on top of the basic crime of blocking public roads. I don't care what your political hobby horse is. Blocking roads, which need to be open for emergency vehicles at all times, is not a valid form of peaceful protest.

If people supported that cluster of crimes financially they were making themselves part of the criminal activity and should deal with the consequences.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest

Since you're against the basic crime of blocking roads, I'm curious how you feel about this https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/08/americas/demonstrators-killed... or the numerous other road blocking protests that were forcefully ended without resorting to murder.

I'm also curious to know your opinions on other armed protests that did not end in a firefight of the past going back to the 1950s (most prominent in the US during civil rights protests), the torching of police cars during hundreds of such protests, and generally how you feel about acts of civil disobedience.

Additionally, I'm curious about your opinions on extrajudicial punishment, government-corporate partnerships, and civil asset forfeiture.

I don't care what your political hobby horse is, how do you feel about a government leaning on a corporate entity to extrajudicially seize control of peoples assets for engaging in civil disobedience?

Funny that someone who is into crypto would be concerned with surveillance. The notion of the "blockchain" is not exactly an improvement in financial privacy given that the general public (cf. a bank, a merchant, some entity that one has transacted with) can see how the crypto user manages his money. As if so-called "tech" companies are not silently collecting enough data about peoples' lives already.

Cryptocurrency _is_ used for money laundering, and generally not as a currency. The internal messages of Binance employees made public after the CZ arrest have provided evidence of what we all knew anyway.

Perhaps the title should be "Is crypto just a money laundering device?"

If you use an ATM and make transactions in cash, then your bank does not know about your transactions (so cannot demand information on them).

This is not the point here.

I'm wondering how it became the norm the your own bank requires to know everything about you and you are not allowed to say no any more. It doesn't feel good. :)

Actually I feel violated..

A lot of this is induced by US regulations also. If you don't comply with these regulations, then you can't interact with the US banking system, even if you do not have any presence in the USA. If you're a bank of almost any size, your going to need US banking access.

It's not personal, it's algorithmic. Switching banks is not going to solve this for you, since every bank that interacts with the economy you live in will have to interact with these laws.

Some are more of a pain about it than others although. Like venmo in the USA temp freezes your account if you put "iranian food" and insists you put descriptions for your transactions, while other p2p cash transfer services in the usa do not insist on transaction descriptions for example.

AML is the least effective policy out there, costing more than it recovers by a large amount and causing a lot of collateral damage to the poor, but there is an entire industry funded by it so thus it continues. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1...

Violation is the societal norm these days — e.g. recent discussions about what modern cars are recording and sharing, geofence warrants, app location data sales, etc.. the list is endless and of course local laws vary so some parts might not be applicable to a dane but in general the panopticon is reality.

> your own bank requires to know everything about you

Don't be angry at your bank. Be angry at your politicians. They pass the laws. The banks (just like everyone else) simply obey the laws. No bank wants to have the cost of a KYC and AML (and it is EXPENSIVE)(consider also the penalties for going over or under on these tasks).

In the same spirit, don't blame your judges. They work with the laws passed on the various parliaments (and/or EU Regulations)

You should. Surveillance is crazy these days. Can you realistically move your business over to in-person cash transactions, or alternate forms of money - precious metals, BTC or similar, etc?

I was told by my bank not to use crypto currency or else ..

Sounds like you, sir or madam, need to get plugged into your local, not-online, crypto exchange community. Some googling should sort you out on that, at least. Inconvenient, cash-based, but FAR less intrusive to your lower GI tract than your local bank, apparently.

> ...banks became mass surveillance devices for the different states disguised by fighting anti money-laundering.

Yes they are, money surveillance. And? That is one of the goals of banks in most countries.

Banks are businesses that need to make profit following the rules of each country, if you don't like it take the cash and put it under your mattress and take care of it. Then start wondering why are you worried about having cash at home and who is the responsible on the security of your house, city and country, how this security is funded and how it can be solved.

> That is one of the goals of banks in most countries

That BECAME one of the goals. 40 years ago when majority of transactions were in cash, the bank's couldn't do this. Once we got credit/debit cards, the game changed and (we) by using cards instead of cash we freely hand them over the data.

It doesn't help that countries have a €500 max cash limit for purchases etc. But for the everyday man/woman, and for their everyday lives, there are very few payments to that amount (laptop, phone, car, furniture). Most other payments can be done with cash, and then the bank has very little info on you.

Actually you can't easily take all of your cash out. Yes i would if it was easy, also in the form of gold and even bitcoin. This would place me on a number of laundering lists. Where i live it is illegal to transact more than 500 euro in cash

I know it's crazy, since 2008 you're actually a criminal if you're not providing information that proves your innocence. In the EU it's even worse than in other parts of the world. Unfortunately, I don't see a way that gets us back to a world like before 2008. Maybe, the situation looks different if central banks inflate the money supply to a point where currencies implode in hyper inflation. But I guess that's not likely but it's the only way for people to wake up.

Governments indirectly forces banks to not deal with physical cash any more. If you frequently deposits/withdraws cash or any untraceable monetary instruments, AML algos flag your account as risky, leading to closure of your bank account. Even though your politicians say that they are not waging a war against cash, governments through regulation/laws such as BSA, AML, and KYC wants a cash-free world, as it becomes easy to trace every transaction.

It is just the way it is. Once a bank asks you for details about a transaction you pretty much have to or you're in for a major inconvenience. My understanding is that the process is partly randomized, meaning that they could ask for details on any transaction regardless of the amount transferred. In majority of cases the bank is just happy to get an answer and won't bother you any further.

But I do agree that it is a bit worrying how AML (combined with terrorism and child abuse) seems to be increasingly used as justification for more surveillance. Personally I am not convinced that the money and resources being spent on AML are yielding proportional results for the cost.

This is another example of a system which depends on input. These kind of systems tend to fail in the sense that a certain type of people can abuse them without detection as they depend on the info people give.. so they are usually flawed and will fail sooner or later. :)

My bank in France (Credit Agricole) requires me to install an App on the phone in order to do operations like entering an non-french IBAN to transfer money to supiers. Stuff that worked before easily over the web, doesn't work anymore if I don't install the app. Now I need to go physically to the branch. And they tell, this is because if security - such a lie. Apps are much more insecure than web + sms tokens.

Simple: organised crime and tax evasion.

You forgot to add 'for the children'. There is no reason any government needs to be THIS far up a private citizen's colon without a warrant.

How quaint! If only organized crime and industrial scale money laundering (billions through NGOs and international “military” operations) were affected by this — at all.

No, this is about Total Informational Awareness and control of the peasants.

> If only organized crime [...] were affected by this

They are. That's why they continue to invest in the development of cryptocurrencies. Without any bank tracking, the likes of Monero wouldn't exist.

> this is about Total Informational Awareness and control of the peasants.

What are they going to do, with the list of my direct debits...? There is nothing to be gained by knowing what 90% of people do with their little pile of money. It's the 10% that matters - the ones who are most likely to be engaged in crimes and tax evasion.

A lot of tax evation going on right in the open so I don't see how much this prevents other than some small time crooks.

If it's more than a million, it is "optimisation" not evasion. And it is mostly legal

I naively opened an account in the US with a local credit union. Took a small loan. Turned out to be a bizarre experience. Before wiring money out of the account, I'd get sent over to a room, where a guy would ask, so, how's everything going? What's this wire for? etc.

Is it DB? Have you been using crypto (did you get a payment from an FTX in the past year?)? Are you also using Lunar?

DB regularly goes into scaremongering whenever a client does something they don't like/understand. Using some "modern" banks (Lunar, Revolut, etc), crypto, or anything of the like triggers alarm bells--undoubtedly physical ones considering how ancient their processes are.

If you're a foreigner, you can double the amount of transactions they will question, and if you don't speak Danish, quadruple. Banksters are sadly very racist in Denmark.

Edit: Remember that DB just got finished dealing with the fallout of their money laundering scanal in Estonia. They "oopsied" away billions, and got less than a slap on the wrist for it. They have massively increased the size of their Financial Crime divisions (hundreds or thousands of people), and all of these people need to "show" their usefulness.

Edit: I'm a DB customer, shareholder, and my gf is a DB employee. Feel free to explain the downvotes.

This is Nykredit. I'm a citizen and have been a customer for 10 years or so but this of course has no meaning any more.

I recently sold some bitcoin and was told not to do it again by the bank. I have been communicating about this for two months now and wrote two complaints.. one to the bank and another to a government agency.

The issue is thay I bought the bitcoin anonymously 10 years ago and kept it in cold storage. They don't understand that. It's has been a shit show, really.

I was also told to prove that the bitcoin belonged to me when I sold it, but they refuse to tell me exactly how they want to get this proof and I refuse to guess what they want and this is a stalemate for now.

I'm being helpful and await their precise instructions about what kind of proof they want ..

Clearly the bank doesn't know anything about crypto currencies.

Edit: I paid taxes and can prove everything. Just to make sure that this is not something illegal going on. :)

Good to know Nykredit behaves the same. Sigh.

As long as you declare your gains to SKAT, then your bank should be fine with you taking money in from an exchange. You only declare your gains and losses after you sell your crypto[1]. From a SKAT perspective, they see crypto just like another FX trade, which is the correct and logical way to look at this.

The only problem is that as you bought the bitcoin a long time ago, I presume you don't have any documentation about it. That's where SKAT may have an issue, and you'll need to pinkieswear that you bought the crypto at $X. I have no idea how they handle this.

You're making me think that now that I'm abroad I'd be better off selling my BTC at an ATM and just take the cash.

[1]: https://skat.dk/borger/aktier-og-andre-vaerdipapirer/skat-pa...

I can prove everything using the wallet I think. The transaction was in cash in a public place. Fun times.

Skat has a guide which I followed, declared and paid them. I don't expect any issues from them.

Well, legalisation of crypto is a known issue. You really can’t just transfer a large amount of money from crypto to fiat and buy a flat or a car — the state will intervene in some way or another. I think you’ll find the same problem if you try to put into a bank a large amount of unexplained cash.

This is repressive. Many things in our world are: say, the institution of citizenship could be viewed as a modern serfdom!

I can't really imagine crypto and denmark in the same context. Crypto is about wealth transfer...If you are wealthy already like Denmark, you wouldn't want crypto ;)

This is a so.ewhay wealthy country and lots of people are into crypto. It looks like many banks are trying to stop people from cashing in based on the media that I read.

Ultimately these banks are acting on government regulations (as you note, for example, AML laws) and governments for sure want to track and monitor how money is being exchanged

What information do you have to provide? If it is just about the transaction itself I don’t see what the problem is. They obviously already know with whom you’re transacting.

In my case it seems the bank wants to have some kind of proof that I owned the bitcoin that I sold.

At first they didn't understand what cold storage was. Now I'm trying to get them to tell me what kind of proof they want me to send them. I don't want to be guessing and having to do this again and again until they are happy ..

Ok, so that has nothing to do with surveillance. I wish you would have shared that context in your post, people are jumping to conclusion about mass surveillance when really you’re facing a cryptocurrency problem.

The first thing that springs to mind here is "Betteridge's law of headlines". As others have noted, the bank is just complying with governmental regulations. What I'm curious about is what you've done to make the bank so curious about you. Banks are generally much less paranoid than you'd expect. It's not in their best financial interest to scrutinise everyone to the highest degree, and performing this due-diligence on customers incurs significant costs. For 99.99% of customers, all the bank wants is some proof that your income stream doesn't come from crime, and that you are who you say you are. What is the bank so curious about in this case?

I bought bitcoin anonymously for cash 10 years ago and sold it recently.

This is a huge red flag.

I paid taxes for this and all is above board.

I feel like this post is the truth of the matter finally coming out. What other outcome did you expect? You've just received a large sum of money, from an indeterminate source, for an indeterminate reason. From the bank's perspective, how do you look any different from drug dealers, or human traffickers? Elsewhere in the thread you said:

> I would expect this to be something that law enforcement would do.

If the bank didn't tell law enforcement about money moving around in strange ways, how would they ever find out?

This is my current issues, but the more important issue is that cash transactions are being monitored - even small amounts. This means that cash is more or less becoming illegal or at least not approved by the people in charge.

Edit: not indeterminate source, but a know large crypto exchange.

> but the more important issue is that cash transactions are being monitored - even small amounts.

How do you come to that conclusion? Monitoring cash at the point of issuing is, when talking about small sums at least, impractical if not impossible. Money laundering directives usually aren't concerned with small cash transactions on the side of the consumer. It's pretty much only relevant if the source of the money is unclear/dubious and/or the sum is very large.

Judging by your examples, both of the examples mentioned above seem to apply.

> Edit: not indeterminate source, but a know large crypto exchange.

The exchange is not the source, it's the exchange. The question the bank has to answer is "where is the money from" and since you just exchanged the money, the question extends to "where is the BTC from"?.

That's one of the reasons I'm in bitcoin. I also like to pay with cash.

"banks are annoying asking me questions, so i will just pay a $1000 fee per transaction and publish every single transaction i make in the open under a pen name that i hope nobody notices is me"

good luck buddy

There is something like the Lightning Network now (already for 6 years but only usable for about on year now in my view). It's like a wrapper around bitcoin. Using it you make transactions which are very cheap and only put a transaction on the blockchain at the beginning and very end. Everything in between in done on the Lightning Network.

"There's the lighting network" has been the standard excuse when I was in crypto before I learned how money actually works.

And yet, it doesn't seem to work. Beyond that, it also addresses only one of the major problems with cryptocurrency

The Lightning Network works. Not sure what you are referring to. Also, not sure what you want to say using your first sentence.

> The Lightning Network works. Not sure what you are referring to

Im referring to the fact that it theoretically works but is in practice not particularly widespread. Also, it’s supposedly capable of handling „millions of transactions per second“, but if that is actually working out remains to be proven.

> not sure what you want to say using your first sentence.

It’s just my annoyance with crypto bros being obsessed with one particular monetary system that played a role for some time while being mostly ignorant to the fact how and why modern currencies work.

This is where those naive obsessions with BTC supply being technically locked etc comes from.

I kind of agree. Bitcoin sucks for every day use. I would like to use crypto when it works as well as credit/debit cards.

If you bought bitcoin 10 years ago you should have had enough time to figure out that you can simply get credit/debit cards that convert your bitcoin into fiat, if that's what you want?

That's a terrible argumentative commenting style. How about just typing out what you mean and your reasoning behind it?

There's also Monero.

Why the condescending tone? Please read the commenting guidelines.

And maybe you should also read the post again, or did you miss this entirely?

> because the bank will cancel my accounts

Good luck cancelling my censorship resistant payments.

When they "cancel your account", what will happen to your money?

I expect that you have two months to find a different bank and move your money.

So nothing much will happend.

All banks are mass surveillance devices. No exceptions.

how much money you have on that account? my guess is that you're a poor customer they're harassing.

I'm a bad customer as I don't have to borrow money and the house is financed using a different bank.

So you're right. They are not earning money on me and this makes me a terrible customer.

I can't wait for CBDCs so we can at least have some legal protection against arbitrary bank decisions and possibly fewer intermediaries

What if the government stops acting in your best interests or isn't acting in your best interests now?

And banks are less likely to do so or they are going to go against the state? Banks are wholly subservient to the states, the tax collectors and to the ecb , if anything they are worse. At least cbdcs will not allow one to become unbanked

It is basically an argument for increased centralization of power. If that is what you want that is completely fine. In my view centralization can be efficient but has higher risks of corruption.

Yes, they are the primary business deputized by the state to surveil and control you. Not just EU banks, but all banks world wide. The whole point is to allow you to engage in commerce only in ways permitted by your government. Not only that, but the idea is to put as many people in the position where they cannot own anything or possess anything of value that cannot be instantly confiscated by the government if it chooses to do so, without resorting to the messy business of coming and getting you. They just turn off your financial access, and you cannot even pay your rent or feed yourself.

It's disgusting, I agree.

lol.

Also see how the new mobilisation law that's about to be voted in by the Ukrainian Rada will heavily restrict access to their bank accounts for Ukrainian citizens who have escaped said potential mobilisation by fleeing the country.

We need to stick to paper money no matter what, otherwise we risk going back to a condition worse than slavery.

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