Poll of the Day > The 'Digital Currency' Conspiracy is so fucking lazy.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Keep seeing this gem:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/5/3/AAUdByAADwr9.jpg

I guess they forgot that most transactions are recorded, your cash withdrawal is recorded, your cash withdrawal is dependent on power and internet too...like just cut to the chase and protest money. Instead you're like, simping for going to the bank??? lol

Cashless societies are killing the tooth fairy!

Car boot sales? Damn Brits!

ReturnOfFa posted...

I guess they forgot that most transactions are recorded, your cash withdrawal is recorded, your cash withdrawal is dependent on power and internet too...

There is the point that that's where the tracking and dependency on outside systems ends. Your cash withdrawal is recorded, but after that there's no record of what you buy with the cash, making it the most private option. There's also a number of people who refuse to use banks altogether and just store all of their money themselves as cash, but that's obviously an extreme case.

shadowsword87 posted...

Cashless societies are killing the tooth fairy!

That's such an odd list. Half of it isn't actually killed by going cashless (selling stuff, saving, tipping, markets), some of the lines are just outright meaningless (tooth fairy/piggy banks), and others aren't exactly high on most people's list of things they like to use cash for (homeless, buskers). The only one that's potentially a legitimate concern is the privacy one, which is buried at the bottom of a list of nonsense.

adjl posted...

There is the point that that's where the tracking and dependency on outside systems ends. Your cash withdrawal is recorded, but after that there's no record of what you buy with the cash, making it the most private option. There's also a number of people who refuse to use banks altogether and just store all of their money themselves as cash, but that's obviously an extreme case.

It definitely is the most private option, but it doesn't mean it isn't traceable...

Same with the cash hoarders. I also find the cash hoarders funny because if everything went to shit...would that cash really be that useful?

adjl posted...

That's such an odd list. Half of it isn't actually killed by going cashless (selling stuff, saving, tipping, markets), some of the lines are just outright meaningless (tooth fairy/piggy banks), and others aren't exactly high on most people's list of things they like to use cash for (homeless, buskers). The only one that's potentially a legitimate concern is the privacy one, which is buried at the bottom of a list of nonsense.

I think it's an odd list because the mind of a boomer is an odd space lol.

i love the center left!

ReturnOfFa posted...

Same with the cash hoarders. I also find the cash hoarders funny because if everything went to s***...would that cash really be that useful?

Indeed. If nobody's able to access any of their digital wealth, society isn't suddenly going to start worshipping the people that still have cash. They're going to prioritize restoring that infrastructure and probably barter some of their physical assets in the mean time.

ReturnOfFa posted...

It definitely is the most private option, but it doesn't mean it isn't traceable...

While true, tracing somebody's cash transactions usually requires specifically investigating them and relying on other methods of surveillance, such as cameras, tracking their phone, or using other identifying information the vendor might collect (which a privacy-obsessed person probably wouldn't give). By comparison, it's pretty easy for the police to just get a warrant and ask a bank for your transaction history. Hiding from people that are specifically hunting you is always going to be hard, but hiding from people that are just mildly interested in finding you but will give up if it's too difficult is fairly easy.

I mean like every penny you make is already tracked?
And I am in favor of not getting rid of physical currency.

ReturnOfFa posted...

I guess they forgot that most transactions are recorded,

Misleading if not outright untrue. The "record" in most cases is a sales ticket between the store and an anonymous party, which may or may not have really taken place (see: money laundering).

The main point was the having anonymity, which they do (more or less).

ReturnOfFa posted...

your cash withdrawal is recorded,

But not what happens to the money afterward and, more importantly, cash can be exchanged multiple times before it touches a bank, In some cases, it might never touch a bank.

ReturnOfFa posted...

your cash withdrawal is dependent on power and internet too...like just cut to the chase and protest money. Instead you're like, simping for going to the bank??? lol

Again, banks may never enter the equation. A cash society CAN run without banks, although it'd be impractical for some things.

And keep in mind some people can't use banks for a variety of reasons.

adjl posted...

That's such an odd list. Half of it isn't actually killed by going cashless (selling stuff, saving, tipping, markets), some of the lines are just outright meaningless (tooth fairy/piggy banks), and others aren't exactly high on most people's list of things they like to use cash for (homeless, buskers). The only one that's potentially a legitimate concern is the privacy one, which is buried at the bottom of a list of nonsense.

Also this.

ReturnOfFa posted...

It definitely is the most private option, but it doesn't mean it isn't traceable...

It's a LOT harder, if not impossible, to trace after just a few transactions. And it's impossible to actually trace as a downstream -- ie, somebody takes money from a bank, buys something, the money is given as change to another customer, and then the customer spends it elsewhere (after which it either goes to a bank or gets given as change to somebody else). At that point, you're only going to be able to ID a very small part of that chain.

ReturnOfFa posted...

Same with the cash hoarders. I also find the cash hoarders funny because if everything went to shit...would that cash really be that useful?

Under a short-term disruption when people can't use banks, etc, cash would be king. Under a long-term disruption, something else might be used as currency or it'd be barter only.

ReturnOfFa posted...

Keep seeing this gem

About half of that is absolutely true though. Peer-to-peer transactions rely on trust in the person logging your account info, so most people wouldn't just trust a random stranger to swipe their credit card via an eReader/their phone... so you probably do overcomplicate or completely negate things like yard sales and flea markets, and impulse donations to charities or street performers or homeless people. You can still give you kid a debit card or something similar to give them spending money, but it does pretty much eliminate the more tangible experience of being able to save money as a physical object (and in turn, develop a better sense of the actual value of money, which is something a lot of people today have terrible grasp of already), and the entire concept of the Tooth Fairy does kind of get a bit more stupid (if it's something you want to perpetuate in the first place). And in the same sense, people who use physical storage to offset poor money awareness to save (ie, putting excess change in a jar, putting aside $20 a week in an envelope to save up for a vacation, etc) would completely lose the ability to do so (unless we overcomplicate accounting and start doing nested savings folders or other ways to compartmentalize your digital money).

And speaking as someone who has literally dealt with the problem before, lack of power or network connection can absolutely fuck you if you desperately need something immediately and there's an outage. Yes - as you say - lack of those things can also prevent withdrawals... but that's more of a long-term problem if you're smart enough to keep cash on hand for emergencies, but in a purely cashless scenario it's also a short-term and immediate problem.

And yes, it abso-fucking-lutely does play a role in transaction privacy, regardless of what some people may choose to believe.

The trick is, most of that is more a question of degree than a simple binary assumption. People love the idea of a black & white world, but we've literally never lived in one.



ReturnOfFa posted...

I guess they forgot that most transactions are recorded

Not if you pay cash (which is the entire point of this argument). A seller may have a record that a sale was made, but unless you literally give them your name or use some sort of account ID card (like a shoppers' rewards card), there's no record of who the item was specifically sold to.



ReturnOfFa posted...

your cash withdrawal is recorded

And while you may know that I withdrew x amount of money from my account, you have literally no way to know what I used it for. Paying cash obscures the transfer from point A to point B.

If I take out $100 and then spend $80 of that buying weird sex toys and $20 buying lunch on the way home, simply looking at my withdrawal info doesn't tell you that.

Again, it's not black & white, but a question of degrees. It's not a choice between ALL privacy and NO privacy, it's a choice between SOME privacy and NO privacy. Suggesting that it must be an all-or-nothing scenario is basically engaging in a logical fallacy for rhetorical purposes.



ReturnOfFa posted...

your cash withdrawal is dependent on power and internet too

And that might actually matter if you exclusively only withdraw money at point-of-purchase (but if you do that, you're essentially already living in a cashless society, because you're basically just using a credit card with an extra unnecessary step). Or if you only pull small amounts out of an ATM shortly before you anticipate needing it (and again...).

But if you keep cash on hand for emergencies, or have a tendency to withdraw larger amounts at the beginning of the week (or month, or whatever) to ensure you always have spending money if you need it, then a short-term outage doesn't stop you from buying anything because you already have the cash. And an outage that is long enough to become a long-term problem is going to start introducing other more pressing issues regardless.

If anything, most of your perspective on the issue seems to be rooted in the fact that you're likely already living a cashless lifestyle, so you're intellectual incapable of understanding the benefits or cash because you never do it anyway.

In which case, none of this is about you and your opinion is kind of meaningless and unwanted.



adjl posted...

Indeed. If nobody's able to access any of their digital wealth, society isn't suddenly going to start worshiping the people that still have cash. They're going to prioritize restoring that infrastructure and probably barter some of their physical assets in the mean time.

Depends on the degree of the outage.

In a short enough timeframe (like, say, ohh... I don't know, a two-week power outage due to a massive hurricane smashing tons of physical infrastructure), having physical cash that is universally known and accepted as tangible currency used to purchase goods and favors absolutely gives you an advantage. Because people know the power is going to come back eventually, and that the cash they are accepting will retain its value and can be cashed in later, it still retains its initial value. Which in that moment makes it infinitely more useful than digital currency stored on a mainframe you cannot access. At the same time, the fact that cash has a specific and established value makes it more useful and efficient than pure barter - the guy selling me bottled water and toilet paper may decide to gouge the fuck out of me and charge $100 for it, but we both still implicitly know what the value of $100 is. Whereas if I'm trying to trade my canned food for someone else's bottled water, we have to establish our own balance of trade in the moment and based on tons of personalized factors (how badly do I need the water? How badly does he need the food? How likely am I to find an alternative elsewhere?).

Cash really only loses its value if the disruption is long enough that society itself is destabilized to the point where governments and banks are disrupted (which requires a catastrophic level of crisis literally none of us alive today have ever seen in a Western nation). At which point the prime form of currency is going to become canned food and shotguns.

every transaction being tracked is what gives crypto its value...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The trick is, most of that is more a question of degree than a simple binary assumption. People love the idea of a black & white world, but we've literally never lived in one.

Indeed. Going purely cashless is rife with problems, but it's exceedingly unlikely that any appreciable percentage of the world will ever truly go completely cashless. Cash may effectively disappear from everyday commerce, but the option to use it will remain.

Lokarin posted...

every transaction being tracked is what gives crypto its value...

These are the kind of people who's greatest aspiration is to have some cabin in the woods they live their life out in without ever seeing another person in their entire life. They don't want anyone to know they exist.

I agree, this is why I'll fully embrace the cap economy after the apocalypse

BlackScythe0 posted...

These are the kind of people who's greatest aspiration is to have some cabin in the woods they live their life out in without ever seeing another person in their entire life. They don't want anyone to know they exist.

They think they need society to collapse for this to happen, when in fact they're perfectly capable of living like this now, and society in fact would appreciate it if they stopped interacting with us