Bitcoin Forum

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-10/cash-no-longer-king-europe-accelerates-move-begin-elimination-paper-money

If you live in the EU, find out if your elected politician supports this or not. If they do, or if they are ambivalent, vote them out. If they tell you that this is needed to fight terrorism, they are either lying or are ignorant...all the more reason to vote them out. Wars and wars on terrorism have been fought for centuries without removing cash.

This is a frontal assault on freedom.

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This whole War on Cash is getting worrisome and tiresome.  For sure it is an assault on our liberties, in a variety of ways.

-- Electronic cash in banks are at risk of being hacked!
-- Would you really want .gov to be able to follow all of your purchases?
-- First comes negative interest rates..., should people try to withdraw their cash, then bam!  Hammer comes down.  We lose...

Yes, vote any politicians OUT who support these very bad ideas.

More and more countries are piling up to move the use of digital money and leaving behind paper money. This is somehow intriguing and worrisome. If there will be no more paper money then the people in the outskirts without access to internet will die of starvation. The New World Order will really move its butt to promote digital fiat currency so they can implant chips to every citizens and that will be the start of demonic rule on earth.

Question:  Why do bitcoin fans care about a cashless society?  That's basically what bitcoin is.  No paper, no metal coins.  Yes, that's what we're moving toward, but I think most people are happy not carrying around cash.  Yeah, the government is pushing toward this but I don't see much opposition to it, except for frigging ZERO HEDGE idiots.  Why do people still read that crap?  All they want to do is push precious metals--the people who write the articles probably have an ulterior motive, you know.

Having said all that, I am definitely a fan of coins and precious metals.  But as far as money goes, it really, really doesn't need to exist physically.  Just like you don't need a stock certificate when you own a stock.

I would argue that Bitcoin (and Monero to a greater extent because it is private) is analogous to digital cash. You can move cash around without necessarily having to go through a bank for quite some time. Same with cryptocurrency. Banning cash means they want control of every transaction. If a government moves to ban or restrict cash, they will also move to ban or restrict its digital equivalent.

But let's say none of that is correct. Even then, we should let our representatives know that this is a short step away from tyranny and it must not be allowed.

I live in the EU and all the politicians in my country don`t really care about this "cashless society" idea.
Terrorists don`t always need cash or digital money.A terrorist can use a knife or a car. :(

It's more like fighting windmills, terrorism must be fought entirely different, but what they do is just the appearance of work. The desired result it will not bring.

Yes, we can speculate the worst situations if the EU decide move to cashless society, the used of their own official digital currency should be affected bitcoin as well. How? I don't think they will allow another competitor which has more advantages. People will prefer to choose bitcoin obviously, if they don't like their every transaction being tracked.
However, I don't think EU citizens will approve this, they have right to vote? It won't be running smoothly without a hitch.

I agree this is shitty.

I pose this question: will Bitcoin or the Euro be more important in 10 years?

Bitcoin. The EU is on its last legs.

Yeah very shitty, Bitcoin will definitely  be very important in the next 10 years due to the global rate of acceptance annually but I can't say the same for the euro.

It is, but I doubt paper money will be removed from circulation. This would take years, because many countries would surely veto, just like they did when EU forced them to receive refugees.
Member countries don't have to accept everything that EU wants. Many of them still haven't accepted Euro, so don't expect them to ban paper money just like that.

There is a big difference between a centrally controlled digital currency stored in banks and a peer to peer currency like Bitcoin. Bail-ins of banks is the newest tool of the government to appropriate your wealth. This is made easier if the only way to hold fiat is through banks. So Bitcoin fans obviously do not like the government's move to a cashless society.

It has positives and negatives really. It seems stupid in the modern age to still be using paper money when it is more efficient to do it electronically. Ultimately it would help to crack down on illicit money and make tracking criminals better. On the other side, if the power supply went down it would cause absolute anarchy and you could argue it would be much easier to repress people who didn't want to live in the system.

See what happened in India? They removed high denomination banknotes just like that. It didn't take them more than 2 months to do so.
If it was possible in India, 2nd populated country in the world to exchange/remove billions of banknotes, I see no technical difficulties to conduct this type of operation in EU.

This is just the EU recommendations. No one argues that the measures will be taken to withdraw the paper money from circulation. I am sure that there are no reasons to worry

My feeling is that we're doing the job for all the nations by moving into crypto currency. I think that it is important that while nation states are fighting to remove their cash and replace it will their digital mechanisms... at the same time we are putting in measures to prevent any one entity that can do it wrong, or give an unsubstantial system to support digital cash, like digital euros in a bank  ::)


Indeed it could seem like a battle ground, whose digital cash is going to win over. I believe that Bitcoin Blockchain is the model that will withhold against hackers as it has been doing, and will prove to be superior to anything the banks will come up with.

It doesn't matter what you vote, there is a global plan to ban cash. This cannot be stopped, cash will not exist anywhere in the world in the next 20 to 40 years or so, it will be a thing of the past.

We can't depend on politicians, only on ourselves, if we want financial freedom. That means, a strong decentralized bitcoin will be our savior, nothing else.

I am sure that even without a global plan of paper money will come out of a turn. They have already lost their popularity. All are moving to digital currency.

A lot of people here are complaining about different disadvantages of electronic/digital cash, such as lack of privacy and risk of hacking. But all of you are ignoring another important thing. Transactions in physical cash is free, while those using digital cash involves a transaction fee to the bank.

Well digital fiat is really to the government's advantage since all your money would be in the bank and the government can keep track of it. If your account is frozen for some reason, then you're screwed. Hopefully by the time this happen Bitcoin is already widely adopted and transaction time would be tolerable enough for some small purchases. With digital fiat the norm (or rather the only system other than cryptos) you either use bitcoin or your country's currency even for the littlest stuff. It would always be better to have a failsafe.

I'm not so sure about that. A year ago, nobody would have thought that Trump, LePen, Wilders, and Brexit would happen. They all have one thing in common: a populist demand for politicians to obey the people. I'm not saying that the fight to stop the ban on cash will be easy, but we've seen that populist movements can be successful. Aside from religion, I can't think of something that could and should cause a stronger backlash against government overreach than interfering with people's money.

How did you find out about the site in the OP? There has been no mention in my country of bans that france and spain have made about withdrawing certain amounts of cash. Doesn't this increase the value of Bitcoin though in a positive way? Not sure the uk will accept that idea anyway (although it might help the banks to function - but not to get customers or copanies to agree (though they have suprised us before)).

I regularly check out zerohedge because they have stories that the mainstream media refuses to talk about, or if they do talk about it, it's on a link way down on the page, almost not noticeable. Many people didn't know about India or Greece's cash ban/restrictions either since the mainstream media didn't give it much press.

In Germany (and other countries where people value privacy more highly) I don't think there is any chance poiticians could ban cash - these people wouldn't get voted never again. And if the EU would impose it, then they would vote EU-skeptical parties and the EU would risk to lose one of its strongest members.

I don't know how it's in Sweden and France (if I remember right they have the most restrictive cash laws) but I consider it also unprobably there will be a complete ban there. I don't think their culture differs that much from the German one for their people to accept a complete ban.

This is a major issue. If the money is stored in the digital form, then it is extremely difficult to prevent any account seizing or haircut from the banks / government. Perhaps that is the main intention behind this move.

If this actually happens, won't people just use things like gold instead or other valuable items in order to exchange faster and without government control.
There is also bitcoin and other currencies that could be ued instead. If the uro becomes digitalised, people may start using USD instead in order to have money that isn't government controlled?

Every thing published on Zero Hedge needs to be considered with a grain of salt. There are lot of garbages posted there.
And if you listen them, every next week, the market will crash, every week it is the financial apocalypse. I no longer visit this site, nor i believe or consider every story that is published. Follow them 1 month and at the end they will have successfully washed your brain and you will live like a survivalist and a bit of paranoia

EU limited cash transactions,like a excuse thay use word tetrorsm.What is behind decsion .Big crisis in EU banking system,Uni Credito italian giant has just reported 13bln of loses,yet another Spenish gian bank 3bln euro of loses,inflation is coming.There is 4 years high inflation in Germany,true is in that flood of printed money there is no money,but people are using cash and thay want to use cash,becouse people dont trust banks anymore

and why we are discussing this? for us bitcoiners the cash are not important, we are going to use a new technology and it's only digitally, why we should care about it? terrorist is always brought as an excuse for bitcoin also to refrain the adoption

You're right. In addition, the transactions with cash are free, they are also anonymous. It is hard to see to it exactly where you spend your cash

Cash is the last thing standing in the way of complete governmental control over private finance. The powers behind this wants to control all

information and that includes information on every single transaction that are made on this planet. Once they control people's finances, they

control their livelihood.  >:( We should never allow this to happen... not even to substitute cash completely with Bitcoin.  :D

Every news org needs to be scrutinized. All of them have an agenda. But as for the war on cash, it's true. Look at India, France, and Greece. And then there's Cyprus. Even in the US the idea has been voiced several times in govt to do away with the $100 bill. So, it's not paranoia. It's happening already. It's still at the point where the populace can get their politicians to fear them on this to not let it spread.

Monopolies are bad. They repress innovation, hinder progress and stagnate society.

Eliminating cash would give banks a monopoly over the exchange (and possible distribution) of currency.

Banks having a monopoly -- complete control over currency, would lead to banks abusing this power & the world would become a much worse place to live.

It is not the banks that I would directly worry about. It is what the governments can do through the banks.
Government policies are no longer stable/predictable these days.

After the economic meltdown of 2008, when the TARP bank bailout bill was being drawn up by Chris Dodd. The process was defined by Chris Dodd asking banks what they wanted in the bank bailout bill and banks essentially getting whatever terms they asked for. It might be accurate to say banks control the government and wield a ridiculous amount of political clout. Banks want to outlaw money to give themselves a larger monopoly over currency exchange.

Banks having a monopoly over money is bad for everyone except banks. If the EU passes legislation which outlaws money it shows that banks are the ones in control, they're the ones running things behind the scenes telling government which laws to pass.