I remember the limit was around 10 thousand until years ago. Or am I wrong?
No, there is one thing about the EU, as long as this is not a directive then it's not a binding rule for all the states.
There was never a cash limit imposed by the EU
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-001048-ASW_EN.htmlbut every country has either enforced its own limits or has decided to not do a thing, France had 10k, Spain had 1k, and Germany had no limit (in theory).
If this goes as regulation every country would be again able to request either delays on its own policies, which are worse in most cases, if it's a directive then for a lot of the EU population not much will change.
Then there is one more thing. Is it for payments over 3,000 Euros as in you can spend 30 Euros 100 times in an year, or is it a cumulative limit? The Anonymous payment limit on Precious Metals in Europe is cumulative. As in, back when the limit was 10,000 Euros you could have placed 100 different orders in the time span of years, worth 100 Dollars each. Then you are considered to have passed the 10,000 Euros Anonymous limit and are therefore required to send Know Your Customer information if you want to order again.
Of course, this cumulative limit is mostly for Online orders where you can particularly request and Anonymous invoice, or for physical purchases. And of course, this limit is easy to pass for physical purchases. The point I am trying to make is that it is still a harsh limit and they are still slowly restricting every now and then until the threshold becomes so low you will not be able to purchase anything besides a few cans of soda without having to provide information.
To be honest you lost me at the limit for anonymous payments, because if somebody can stack those up then you're not anonymous at all, more like bitcoin pseudo-anonymous!
If somebody thinks they are after the little guy who will split the 10 000 in 5 sums and just be done with it they are mistaken, avoiding taxes and undeclared cross-border payments as well as revenues have gone up like mad since the COVID era. You're talking about a guy purchasing $100 worth of metals I've seen 10 years of business partners offering us cash payments per truck, 5% of if we sell without a receipt, and those are 30-45k euros of food per truck, I haven't seen these things happening like this since the 90's.
The EU has acted stupidly with all that freedom before and now that they want to plug in the whole they have created themselves there will be of course collateral victims!
But, at the end of the line, everyone wanted crypto to be legal, to use crypto as fiat, so why the surprise when it's treated the same way?