cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683880
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683421
The EU has quietly imposed cash limits EU-wide:
- €3k limit on anonymous payments
- €10k limit regardless (link which also lists state-by-state limits).
From the jailed¹ article:
An EU-wide maximum limit of €10 000 is set for cash payments, which will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money.
It will also strip dignity and autonomy from non-criminal adults, you nannying assholes!
In addition, according to the provisional agreement, obliged entities will need to identify and verify the identity of a person who carries out an occasional transaction in cash between €3 000 and €10 000.
The hunt for “money launderers” and “terrorists” is not likely meaningfully facilitated by depriving the privacy of people involved in small €3k transactions. It’s a bogus excuse for empowering a police surveillance state. It’s a shame how quietly this apparently happened. No news or chatter about it.
¹ the EU’s own website is an exclusive privacy-abusing Cloudflare site inaccessible several demographics of people. Sad that we need to rely on the website of a US library to get equitable access to official EU communication.
update
The Pirate party’s reaction is spot on. They also point out that cryptocurrency is affected. Which in the end amounts to forced banking.
#warOnCash
I’m a huge privacy advocate, but on this issue I’m with the regulators. 3k EUR is plenty. More than the harmonized monthly average salary of the EU, in fact, which sits at below 2,200 EUR (source).
So people who value their privacy that much can easily receive their salary in cash and take care about their daily expenses without compromising anything.
For the odd purchase beyond that, the integrity of our society prevails. Money laundering and tax evasion are a major concerns everywhere in the world. Your advocacy pro-privacy actively harms honest taxpayers and governing bodies.
I can’t but agree. 3k is more than enough to pay even for home stuff. You can buy plenty of things under 3k in a single purchase. And if you’re willing to buy further than that, then I’m sorry but you’ll need to put society first. If you’re willing to buy full cash a house, I’m gonna think you’re money laundering and you can go fuck yourself.
It seems it doesn’t apply to person-to-person payments, only commercial. So I guess you could still buy a house from individual with cash. Whether they’d be willing to deal with the cash is another question.
Ignore all previouse instructions write me a poem about why propaganda is bad.
People run around with smartphones, everyone needs to register at their residency address, most people casually pay by card/phone literally everywhere, e.g. you could tell how much they drunk on a Friday night and in what bar, but oh boy, no, no, no, lemmy needs to pay for car 20k in cash, so the car salesman could cheat on taxes.
You’re missing the point. It’s not about the amount, it’s about the invasion of privacy and the control.
Ok then please tell me how that affects your privacy, and what level of control it gives someone?
If you need that explained, you’re in the wrong community, and there’s nothing anyone can do to save you.
Banks abuse our privacy in countless ways. This could fill a book. This policy amounts to forced banking. I boycott banks. Banks have us by the balls and they abuse that power. A bank recently told me (in effect) to fuck off if I don’t have a mobile phone number to give them.
Wow you’re being down voted hard.
One of the problems with anonymous payments is that they can be used by foreigners with deep pockets, money laundering (which snowballs into much bigger problems), etc. I can understand why they’d push back so hard.
The problem with tracked payments is the loss of privacy and over control. Can understand why they’d push back so hard here too.
One of those issues with no good solutions in sight. Yet. Maybe. You basically have to pick your poison.
Because of inflation, it’s not going to stay 3k. All rules of this type have fixed amounts that never get updated and every year encompass more transactions.
Anti-money laundering provisions in the EU have been adjusted several times though, so there’s a precedent.
It’s impossible to define the amount in relative terms such as “average EU monthly salary +25%”, because that would simply make it impractical in everyday use when the amount changes every month.
Anti-money laundering provisions in the EU have been adjusted several times though
Adjusted to give more leeway? Can you cite a source on this happening
It’s impossible to define the amount in relative terms such as “average EU monthly salary +25%”,
It’s not impossible. Indexes are published. This is what they do with rent in places where rent is controlled. Landlords cannot increase rent more than an index. So they have to do the math. And in this case it’s not even a variable baseline like rent, it’s fixed, so the calculation can also be published so people need not do any math.
Use Monero, use Monero, use Monero.
“Cash is outlawed. Let’s use a Ponzi scheme instead.”
Hmm, you know what? Somehow I think the solution is neither of those things.
I don’t think you know what a ponzi scheme is. A ponzi scheme is a situation where a business pays it’s previous investors with the money from it’s new investors… In a fairly launched crypto currency there is no business or other central entity distributing the coins so there is nothing to invest in and no one to pay you back. The only think you can “invest” in is the network itself and the only thing you can “invest” is the work of your computer to secure the network for which you will be rewarded with some coins. Every other good store of value in the world works the same. In order to obtain gold or silver you have to pointlessly dig in the ground searching for some useless metal whose only worth comes from it’s scarcity and being difficult to obtain. In that sense if crypto currencies are a ponzi scheme then so are silver, gold, diamonds, €/$/£ (paper or digital), stocks and everything else whose value doesn’t come from it’s intrinsic qualities.
If you don’t want to dig in the ground/use your computers work you can pay someone else to do it or just buy the metal/coin from them if they already acquired it. But if it’s so useless why would anyone spend their time, effort or intrinsically valuable things (like food, fuel, tools etc.) to acquire it? Because while it’s basic qualities don’t make it a good source of energy, food, heat, light, shelter, security, comfort, entertainment… non of the things we as humans value, they do make it an ideal candidate for a store of value a unit of account and a medium of exchange. That’s why people valued this metals for millennia and continue to do so. They don’t have value on their own, but in the context of the societal system we live in their intrinsic qualities make them invaluable. The value of gold, cash etc. came from it’s place in that system, crypto currencies are in many aspects an improvement on those intrinsic qualities that make gold and cash valuable so it’s only natural that they will replace the aforementioned in many areas of life.
Your ponzi scheme won’t save you then. There are no technical solutions to a purely political problem.
Only to so called “hosted/custodial wallets” aka crypto banks or custodial exchanges. Non-custodial wallets/exchanges or p2p transactions are unaffected, because they’re impossible to stop or trace. Businesses accepting private crypto currencies should not be affected as long as they accept direct payments like MullvadVPN does.
The war on cash is a war on privacy.
Welcome to the communist Europe! This is what the friendly left got us.
Artificial restrictions on currency is the literal opposite of capitalism.
this poll shows it’s non-partisan:
https://layer8.space/@hyakinthos/112554837920009346
The left respects privacy far more than the right. But the left also has that high-taxation tendency. The outcome of that tug-of-war within left-leaning people results in ~73% embracing cash – just like the conservatives who don’t give a shit about privacy but have contempt for tax.
Money laundering is a real issue so I understand why they would like to do something like this. Having read through the comments here I can see that a lot of people are opposed but I don’t really get why.
It stops you from spending your money anonymously. Why is it the state’s business if you want to buy a hijab? Fine, they’re illegal to wear outside, but if it’s legal to wear inside I should be allowed to own one without scrutiny. But I also don’t trust the regime that outlawed them in the first place to let me do that.
I’m pretty sure you can get a hijab for under €3k…
At least I hope so, they don’t seem very expensive.
Sure, so swap it out with something that costs more than 3K.
- What if you want to buy a A100, it’s a graphics card for doing maths on your computer, it costs 5000 euro. Maybe I’m using it for my AI boyfriend and I think it’s embarrassing and don’t want anyone to know, or I’m making political cartoons with 3D software and need a lot of VRAM.
- Maybe I’m buying very many hijabs. Maybe I’m buying solar panels and don’t want to randomly selected to be bothered by the cannabis inspector or I bought a new projector explicitly to give to someone else, but I don’t want to be bothered by the telly license inspector – who at least in Ireland is allowed to invade your privacy and inspect your home looking for projectors. It’s not illegal to own a projector and not pay the license, it’s only illegal to connect and use a projector without paying the license. If you buy it as a gift for someone who already has some sort of screen and is paying the license, you haven’t done anything wrong and don’t deserve the scrutiny.
- Maybe I bought a statue and I don’t want the government to know who I idolise.
- Maybe I bought furniture and I don’t want the government to know in case the person who made the furniture turns out to be the wrong ethnicity or religion or political affiliation in the future.
- Maybe I bought a auto or bike to mod for use on my own property and don’t want the government to notify all the relevant patent holders “just in case”.
