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Surviving the Cashless Cataclysm
MrSeb writes "There's been a lot of noise about Sweden becoming a cashless economy, and the potential repercussions that it might cause, most notably the (apparent) annihilation of privacy. Really, though, I think this is a load of hot air. Physical money might be on the way out, but that doesn't mean the end of anonymous, untraceable cash — it'll just become digital. If Bitcoin has taught us anything, it's possible to create an irreversible, cryptographic currency — but so far it has failed because it doesn't have sovereign backing. What if the US or UK (or any other country for that matter) issued digital cash? We would suddenly have an anonymous currency that can be kept on credit chips (or smartphones) and traded, just like paper money. No longer would handling money require expensive cash registers, safes, and secure collections; your smartphone could be your point of sale. It won't be easy to get governments to pass digital cash into law, though, not with big banks and megacorps lobbying for centralized, electronic, traceable currency. Here's hoping Sweden makes the right choice when the referendum to retire physical money finally rolls around."
Bitcoin is not anonymous. Bitcoin transactions are necessarily public information.
You can't be anonymous (disconnected) while at the same time expect digital currency to remain globally consistant and secure. It's an oxymoron.
Even if it were possible it is unrealistic to assume a single government exists on the planet who would choose to implement such a system. Where is the value to the government in not being able to trace all transactions even if you ..wink wink nudge nudge don't know "who" owns what money at a point in time.
There's a run right now in the US on "Tide" laundry detergent. It's being stolen and traded for drugs and cash. It sells "on the street" for about half what the store charges...
- Hiring a consenting prostitute
- Purchasing pornography over the internet that goes beyond contemporary community standards
- Purchasing alcohol of some types/quantities/purities that may not be lawful in your state or county.
- Purchasing unpasteurized dairy products
- Person-Person transactions that are not directly taxed. If you think it should be-- fuck you, my 14 year old kid should be able to mow the neighbor's lawn without the IRS getting a cut. And I should be able to pay an allowance the same.
- Purchasing anything that I want to remain private -- legality aside. Prepaid cellphones/sims and other 'cash only' items people value for whatever reason...
- Certain 'holistic' medical practices. My body. My choice. My right.
- Bitcoin is arguably illegal in the US, as are other competing currencies.
Should I keep going with other more sensitive things?
I can give a good example of something that actually IS legal yet is interfered with because the govt dont like it. Wikileaks.
Wikileaks remains within the first ammendment (And should Assange be charged, any competent judge will throw it out based on the Elesburg precedent) yet because its extremely difficult to make real-world payments due to the internet nature of it, their ability to tell samizdat news has been wrecked by interference from governments and their bank lackeys.
If cash payments become impossible everywhere you can expect that to extend to other things where govts dont like it, particularly political parties with agendas unpopular with government, such as socialists , anarchists and stateless capitalists, or groups such as sea-shephard etc that strongly agitate governments.
Finally there are legal products that one might want off the record, such as sex products or in the US firearms.
Privacy is important dude, and there really is no such thing as anonymous online currenct. Even bitcoin (aka "comedy currency") isnt anonymous, in fact the oposite, once you know someones block address you can easily trace their transactions just by examining the record of the block-chain.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.