first month with central bank digital currency, instant kidnaps were thru the roof.
the "solution" lower limits of how much you can transfer. what a joke.
now only 100usd per day can leave your pocket. wish i was kidding. even lower at night when traveling i have to wake up at 3am to make payments thanks to timezones.
people can raise limits, but if you pay for something expensive once you're probably marked forever as having lots of money in your pocket. with cash, that would be a one time opportunity to be robbed. with cashless, you signaled that forever you're a good target.
Bank transactions are trivially traceable and reversible by the state. I've been actively against bitcoin and monero exactly because they facilitate kidnapping and other forms of effectively irreversible digital theft.
The best part about living in a society with institutions based on trust instead of non-trust, is that it's trivially easy to eject bad actors from the system.
> Bank transactions are trivially traceable and reversible by the state
instant, cashless, transactions are not reversible, and can be withdrawal instantly on the other end. sum that with the usual practice of employing disposables young criminals to quickly withdrawal the funds and you have even less risk than btc or cash based crime.
sheltered engineers in silicon valley or theoretical economist in boston... will never get how easy it is for criminals to sidestep rules.
> Without bitcoin, you collect the ransom in gold with a dead drop.
Where the perpetrator needs to:
1. Be in the general area.
2. Only ask for enough currency that's easy to physically move (an actual real limitation in many countries)
3. Be sure the bills aren't marked (practically impossible). Because of this:
3(1). Be sure to not deposit the currency, ever.
3(2). Be sure not to use the currency with anyone who knows you who will every deposit the currency ever.
3(3). Allow the victim only enough time to procure a large amount of currency (likely days), but not enough time to procure a large amount of marked currency (this is an inherent conflict).
Obviously kidnapping is possibly via use of physical currency, but the practical limitations of cash over anonymous digital currency with regards to kidnapping are massive.
Your concerns with hyperinflation are alleviated by investing in any commodity, and trading on a black market. The fact that the commodity is a blockchain asset is effectively moot. The days of states not forcing individuals to be up front with capital gains on blockchain assets are over.
It might, sure, but it might also have to do with the fact that people carry almost nothing in cash compared to 40+ years ago.
In 1985, when I was a child, my father would care around $300 on him effectively at all times. Credit cards were still new, and checks were a limited option, most places you still needed cash. That's the equivalent of $850 today. I rarely carry more than $200 on my person today (less than the cost of a fancy dinner for two in San Francisco). The only reason I'm able to do that is because the vast majority of my transactions settle on a bank card.
You can argue that the change is surveillance, but the stark decrease in untraceable value I carry on my person is clearly an incentive for robbery that has been lost. It's also likely a major reason for the near-elimination of pick-pocketing in western society.
I was responding to your argument that there are no economic incentives to mug people. The mugger isn't out to impose a cost on the victim, but to get some free money. Purchasing power on a credit card is just as good, although it's not as flexible/reliable as a wad of cash.
Everyone you see on the street has a slab of metal in their pocket that you can take apart and sell for parts online, or sell as a bricked device to some sucker. This cashless society is dealing with a robbery problem in places like Beverly Hills, because for some segments of our society its common to wear $30,000 on your wrist. A couple hundred cash perhaps in a wallet is honestly the low end of the potential take for a mugger these days, if they know where to mug.
I think cash should always be an option, but I don’t pretend that cards haven’t dramatically improved our lives.