The war on cash has been a favorite pet project of the economic central planners for quite some time now. They want to eliminate hand-to-hand payments so that governments can control, document and tax everything. The governments hate paper cash as it is so hard to track and the light in the darkness for them to rectify this is Bitcoin and its distributed ledger but they want control of it first.
Although you won’t hear anything about this in the mainstream press the wheels are already in motion to eliminate the paper cash system and among other tell-tell signs that this is the case was in December of 2015 one of the world’s largest and oldest bank note printers De La Rue announced it is cutting banknote capacity by a massive 25%. They are also eliminating 300 jobs and closing 50% of their production line.
Over the last few years Spain banned cash transactions over €2,500, Italy made cash transactions over €1,000 illegal; Russia banned cash transactions over $10,000; France made cash transactions over €1,000 illegal and in the United Kingdom banks now charge businesses for depositing amounts over £1,000.
Central banks see moving to digital currencies as a way to eliminate underground economies and believe it could prevent another banking crisis as negative interest rates if they were to become too strong could trigger a bank run. So if there is no paper money to withdraw and store under our mattresses it means there couldn’t be one.
http://cointelegraph.uk/news/the-war-on-cash-bitcoin-blockchain-banks-decentralisation
