Topic: How a cashless society could kill Bitcoin. - page 4. (Read 6534 times)

In the movies happens all the time, in reality even more times, innocent guy get arrested and prosecuted. What are our options, that is the point here? What we can do if we become unwanted in eyes of law?
Maybe this duality is a good thing, to have bitcoins and cash in the same time. In that way we will always be able to choose what we suit more.

Haha you are too naive.

They will just freeze your bank account for any reason. You know laws change every time, and if for some reason some Orwellian Nazis take control, then we are all fucked.


The scumbag Nazis froze and confiscated Jewish bank accounts in 1935, no trial, no hearing, just like that based on a hateful racial ideology, so what makes you think that your current govt has your best interest in your mind?

It can happen again if totalitarianism comes back.


Just read this thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/extreme-dangers-of-cashless-society-1738530

They... just freeze them? Government order or bank choice? The thing is a cashless society makes it exponentially easier for a government to maintain complete control over their citizens because it can freeze accounts of political enemies or people who want to think outside of the system, or critiques of the government can find their entire bank account wiped, frozen or they can be blacklisted on the system, preventing them from ever making their money.

If you don't think governments do this, you haven't been paying attention to world history. It happens over and over, just not in the exact same way.

How the hell would they freeze bank accounts? It is done for a reason, especially when you violated laws.

I agree, once they would start freezing bank account randomly, and people could not buy a piece of bread and starve to death because there would be no other currency.


Then people would quickly realize why it's important to have a decentralized payment system and currency.



It would exponentially accelerate the use of Bitcoin.

Look at the answer in my previous post.   I fully agree that *if there is no real world knowledge* then it will not be propagated (obviously) on the block chain.  This is probably the kind of anonymity Satoshi thought he implemented.  But using money means of course giving out real world knowledge about a specific transaction.  Most of the time, the buyer and the seller know each other (it is even legally required, with KYC).  That a buyer and a seller know each-other, and know the specific transaction between them, is normal.    However, that this knowledge (to the buyer - emitter of coins - for future information propagation, to the seller - receiver of coins - for information propagation in the past) LINKS to other transactions is the privacy nightmare of a public ledger.

In my example of me, the plumber, Joe and Mary, Joe received future knowledge as a buyer about MY transactions ; Joe further received coins from Mary, which propagated information backward about HER transactions.  When he combined both, he found out something new, namely that I (he knew me) transacted to Mary (he knew her).

The fundamental error in thinking that bitcoin's pseudonymity implies transaction anonymity is by looking at addresses and transactions in an abstract way.  Of course, there's no way to find out, JUST from looking at the ledger, what real world identity is connected to what bitcoin addresses or transactions.  But that's not the point.  ONCE you know something, and with use of money, that's very normal, as money is about agreements and interactions between people, that knowledge
PROPAGATES.

"mixing bitcoin" is a somewhat clumsy way to obtain a kind of anonymity in bitcoin, but you need a third, trusted party for that, and (shady ?) partners that want to mix too.  With sufficient effort, such "mixing constructions" can be obtained with fiat too if you are allowed to trust third parties.  The bitcoin protocol IN ITSELF doesn't allow any form of automatic anonymity.   
The point is that mixing is clumsy in bitcoin, that most coins aren't mixed, that the mixing itself "colours" the coins, and that non-mixed coins, with the network of change addresses and combinations to arrive at the right amounts of payment, are propagating real-world knowledge to *anyone*, not just to banks and law enforcement if they obtain a warrant for it.

If I'm a plumber, and I get paid in bitcoin to repair the toilets in Joe's bar, and then I give some of those coins to Mary, who is my friend, and Mary goes and has a coffee at Joe's bar, then Joe can EASILY find out that the money he gave me to pay for his toilet repair, ended up in Mary's hands, so that there is a link between me and Mary.  If the same is done with fiat, Joe doesn't know such a thing.  Bitcoin's ledger is propagating real world knowledge like a bush fire.
Yes, I can mix my coins.  Yes, I can do 20 transactions between my own accounts and pay a lot of fees to "hide" this.  Joe will nevertheless see that Mary got the bitcoins he gave me at a certain point, even though now Mary COULD also have obtained them from a shady drugs dealer on the other side of the world I happened to mix with. But what should have remained (innocent) private information, is shouted out to the world with bitcoin's transparent ledger, and to even try to hide it takes me a lot of effort, and the necessity to trust a third (mixing) party ; while with fiat, that kind of innocent privacy comes automatically.  If Joe has paid me with a wire transfer, and I gave money to Mary with a wire transfer, and she paid with her VISA card at the bar, then Joe cannot know in the most remote way that the money he got from her was the money he paid me.  Actually, in fiat, that doesn't even make sense, because bank money is fungible while bitcoin isn't (by definition, every coin has a whole history to it which distinguishes it from another one - apart from a mixer operation).

Well if India is anything to go by, then you are right - there wasn't much interest in bitcoin there at all till the withdrawal of the notes in circulation.

I disagree with the OP. A "cashless" society would even benefit Bitcoin.

Electronic payment systems are eye-openers, they show people that there exist other methods than cash and credit/debit cards (that also are "cashless", but their usage is more similar to that of cash as you don't need a computer or smartphone to use them).

If some governments would forbid Bitcoin payments to large companies in some countries (like in your Amazon example) then let me remark two things:

1) there are a LOT of governments and countries, it's extremely improbable that Bitcoin payments to large companies would be banned in all or even a majority of them;
2) if Bitcoin is popular and there would be only companies from a Bitcoin-hostile country (e.g. the US with Amazon) banned from accepting it, there would be, very probably, other alternatives in other countries.

What could kill Bitcoin is a "moneyless" society. I think that's less utopic than it sounds. (Take the open-source-software business: it's already largely money-less). In a few decades, maybe we'll not need the USD nor Bitcoin to get access to goods. Then Bitcoin, probably, will die.

Going cashless is not that good, since you are going to leave a record somewhere of your transactions, one of the good thing a bout cash is you can buy stuff and it is not reflected anywhere. So I see a cashless society where people still use fiat as a terrible idea for those that are concerned about their privacy.

Yes bitcoin is anonymous but these days there are ways that bitcoin transaction could be tracked already thats why some really need to use mixers to increase the anonymity features of bitcoin.Cashless society would really be on the future and electronic payments and transactions would be there it might affect bitcoin somehow regarding on adoption but it cant kill bitcoin.

I think he is not talking about fiat transaction or electronic transaction is not anonymous he is just talking about special request that honestly we i never experience that there is special request in electronic cash to transfer or sending or receiving ..
Bitcoin is anonymous even you do not need to use mixer.

Seeing a Hero Member saying this is astonishing. Okay the ledger is public, and in the only purpose that if someone wanted to verify that someone possesses what he claims to own, or cases like that. You can know how much one possesses, but only if he choose to let you know, and that is the beauty of the thing. NSA can not know how much I have if I do not want them to know.

What the hell!? You think electronic fiat transactions are more anonymous than bitcoins? With bitcoins you can mix your coins, how the hell do you do that with fiat? Run a shady drug ring out of your backyard!? Come on man. That doesn't make sense at all.

We can only hope that by the time they consider bitcoin a real treat, our technology is robust enough, and private enough that we can bypass all the government 1984 tier surveillance. Make no mistake, it is only a matter of time until US, EUR China and Russia start banning bitcoin, some other places may follow. Governments hate to not have control of the monetary policy, they will not give up without a fight, so bitcoin and its community must remain strong in order for freedom to finally win.

Unless one implements a form of anonymity in bitcoin, bitcoin is a privacy hell as compared to electronic fiat cash.  In fact, I guess it would be a dream for all agencies of whatever nature that want to audit people for their behaviour, that people use bitcoin.  Bitcoin is a privacy nightmare with its transparent ledger as it stands today.  Electronic cash (fiat) can only be audited with a special request, but the block chain is open to read and analyse for anyone.  It propagates real world knowledge of transactions like a bush fire.

This is just waiting the time, many peoples said if bitcoin will banned by the government and then will die, but until now its never happen.

Remember that it will all take time. But I expect it to happen in next 5 to 10 years. And I don't see how bitcoin will fail when people go cashless. There are only ways for bitcoin to flourish!

So they will have to make it into the UN Security Council to outlaw Bitcoin on a world-wide scale, right? I'm not talking about under what guise or pretext they are going to ban Bitcoin (money laundering, terrorism financing, climate change, etc), my point is that it would mean in effect recognizing Bitcoin as the threat to all "advanced and progressive humanity" as Joseph Stalin put it and, at the same time, its strength. The main issue is that governments today don't have as much power as they had some fifty years ago, and they may lose this battle in the end...

Bitcoin is parasitizing on fiat making use of its weaknesses, and while there is fiat there will be parasites

Bitcoin is too small to be a threat right now (so that is another reason to buy it at this price.)  The US-led system has clearly seen it as an asset rather than liability, for the reason I stated.

If the major governments present a united front (as often has been the case when the imperial system was strong, e.g. the IMF stipulates no member may anchor its currency with gold,) and if this united front doesn't want Bitcoin, Bitcoin would probably be dead.

Right now, only the West, plus Japan, Australia, etc. support the imperial system.  Russia and China are not (fully) co-operating, so that is another reason for buying Bitcoin, (similarly for gold in this case.)