Taking $200 Out of an ATM Should Not Trigger Federal Financial Surveillance | Hacker News Reader

Taking $200 Out of an ATM Should Not Trigger Federal Financial Surveillance

reason.com

26 pointsbloomingkales12 comments

the irony is KYC/AML basically only made things worse for consumers while doing nothing to combat banks from doing lots of illegal things.

KYC/AML now means you have to share incredibly personal and high-risk details with... anyone you bank with or who has to transmit funds. So now every single element of the banking system is a target due to that data.

And like clock-work HSBC and Chase have still been caught and meagerly fined for transacting with known terror groups and drug cartels. At times even laundering money for known persons even on OFAC ban lists.

Yeah, this sounds like a flimsy excuse for the Federal government to record everybody in those areas doing anything more than grocery shopping* so that they can do a general fishing-expedition.

* Until tariff-taxes and general government malcompetence brings inflation up to cover that too.

Switch to Monero (via permissionless swaps) and say goodbye to surveillance (once you are in Monero).

Here is a decent episode on it: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/podgenai/episodes/Mo...

If you keep more than $1000 worth of assets in it, please use a cold storage wallet for your safety.

Here's the thing, seizing of crypto is how they intend to fund the "strategic bitcoin reserve".

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-pr...

I might be giving them too much credit, but the conspiracy follows.

They seize it from criminals, not from everyday citizens. Also, with Monero, as long as your keys are safe, its's not going to be seized. It is unlike Bitcoin in that a wallet's balance isn't even trackable by outsiders.

If you are taking out $200 from an ATM you are probably buying something from a local store. Groceries, car mechanic, maybe going to a bar, something like that. Good luck paying for that with Monero.

Oh and I hope you don't lose your cold storage (or the keys for it), because thats basically the same as losing cold hard cash. You could also pay for some sort of managed cold wallet but (1) whats the point? You're basically back to banks then; and (2) congrats, you are now paying $$$ to hold $$$.

I'm a big fan of crypto, and I think it does bring valuable things to the world, but it is no where near ready to replace regular consumer fiat transactions.

For the record, there is no such thing as a managed cold wallet. Crypto is either exchange-custodied or self-custodied. If someone is given the unencrypted keys, it's as bad as donating your crypto to them.

At least various major gift cards can be purchased using crypto. This is not sufficient for real world use, but it is not nothing either. Substantial real world use will have to wait for the collapse of national currencies due to their exponential debt.

There are managed cold wallets of various flavors - either managed hardware, multisig partners, or in some cases just sales shenanigans where they are full key custodians but call it cold storage. Its a problematic part of crypto from a foundational perspective.

if you open a bank account at all, by default you are under some form of surveillance

I have one rule about ATMs. Always take out the maximum amount.

The third party doctrine probably makes this perfectly legal.

So the bad people go to zip codes not on the list???

Reply on news.ycombinator.com