I don't think they were making that argument, more that websites don't usually take cash anyway.

(Can't imagine pornhub selling gift cards at the supermarket checkout next to the App store ones)

In North America, retail stores often sell prepaid Visa cards that can be used both offline and online.

NYC cashless ban law exception allows a fee-free machine to convert cash to prepaid digital payment mechanism, e.g. stored value card.

US Coinstar kiosks offer fee-free conversion of coins to Amazon and other gift cards.

Prepaid VISA doesn't get around the payment processor refusing to handle transactions for certain businesses though.

Maybe EFT (e-Check) or Zelle does? It's still on line and tracable but is not going through card processor networks.

Interesting. We could probably sell cards with crypto on it with immediate resolution by simply transferring the passphrase/wallet rather than on the chain.

Could do it with pure stablecoin.

Texas has proposed a gold-backed digital currency, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866856

> The comptroller would also be required to create a mechanism that would allow the new gold-backed digital currency to be used by citizens for their daily transactions. “In establishing the digital currency the comptroller shall establish a means to ensure that a person who holds the digital currency may readily transfer or assign the digital currency to any other person by electronic means.”

A bitcoin bearer instrument. Like this https://opendime.com

What? There are people in this comment section doing exactly that.

For example?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36117805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36116663

Then there are the people defending the steps to the cashless society because those steps happened to be on people they didn't like: canadian truckers and pornhub.

I recall one explicit comment I can't find now so I am willing to believe I hallucinated it.

Those are people arguing for cash-less society.

> No one is arguing for a cash-only society.

My statement was about the opposite, i.e. co-existence rather than exclusion :)

My bad. I completely misread your comment. I am sorry for that.

Let me be the first to argue for it. Electronic money is horrible. It obscures how much you're really spending on things. It requires a middle man in every transaction skimming a bit off the top. One company runs all the debit payments here. Mastercard and Visa used to split the credit card market but I assume they colluded to monopolize on on MC here. The government has passed laws demanding business partake in the racket but nothing to require acceptance of cash. Cash not accepted for public transport. Laws stating a maximum value of a transaction that is permitted in cash but have never increased the limit while they've been inflating the value away.

The idea elected politicians want a cashless society is utterly absurd to me.

It misses the obvious fact that an elected politician needs the privacy of cash for taking bribes.

A cashless society can only work in an authoritarian regime that simply doesn't care if the populace knows about bribes or not.

Billions of dirty money have passed through existing digital systems, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36119556

Future digital payment systems can have a wide range of transparency, they are unlikely to be limited to public blockchains.

China is rumored to have a do-not-see list which excludes selected elites from detection by ubiquitious surveillance cameras.

It’s pretty hard, cash is like contraband in many cases