EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments

[quadcore]

Generally prohibiting anonymous payments would at best have minimal effects on crime, but it would deprive innocent citizens of their financial freedom. The medicines or sex toys I buy is nobody’s business

The consequences of KYC are way worse than that. You have to interact with someone in power when you make a payment, thats the bad part. Cause that someone now have a good occasion to hurt you (racism, discrimination, political opposition, wars, etc).

Im speaking from experience here. Moreover the rich and powerful makes payments the way they want lets not fool ourselves.

Now granted they catch some dirty shit with KYC but we'd like to see some report on the extent of that at least.

[rhdunn]

Where KYC means Know Your Customer.

[chmod775]

You know they're full of shit when CTRL+F "terror" on the full text of that regulation gets 195 hits.

[arp242]

> More than 90% of responding citizens spoke out against such a step.

It was a web survey with fairly low numbers: 30,317 in total, which is very little for all of the EU.[1]

And of course the results of this will be biased towards people who object to this. If there had been a meaningful number of respondents then it might be a signal of sorts, but as it stands with 28,784 people protesting this is completely meaningless. You can find those numbers on almost any proposal.

Never mind the responses are almost exclusively from France, Germany, and Austria. All of Ireland is represented by just 14 people. Netherlands 26. Etc.

> According to an ECB survey up to 10% of citizens use cash even for amounts greater than 10.000 € (e.g. buying cars)

I can't find this survey. I can find some ECB surveys about cash, but nothing that confirms this. The phrasing "up to" makes me suspicious, especially since the previous claim is already a misrepresentation.

Also note that buying a car is rarely anonymous as it is, because registration and/or insurance is usually mandatory. I don't think there are EU members where this is not the case?

[1]: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2017-07/st...

[brsc2909]

I'm Irish, usually pretty clued in on things. But had no idea this was actually being put through. (I suspected it would be eventually) I would definitely be objecting.

[miohtama]

National threshold can be lower. France has banned cash payments over 1000 EUR.

[carimura]

Like frogs boiling in water.

[miohtama]

Next central bank digital currency.

You own nothing and you will be happy.

[hexo]

The cash limit now is like 5k euros. It sucks but the new cap is outrageous.

[lxgr]

I'm a big fan of anonymous payments as a component of a resilient democracy, but to me, there's an amount cap where the tradeoff starts getting skewed from that to facilitating money laundering, tax evasion and other bad things.

I can imagine dozens of good use cases for <€5000 anonymous payments, but not many above that.

If there's real demand for it, I think we should come up with a technical solution that e.g. provides one-sided privacy like GNU Taler (taxation usually happens at the payee level, so the payer can usually remain anonymous; the same applies to things like terror financing etc).

[raverbashing]

Note that this is a committee approval, not a final parliament approval

And yes the limit on 3k/10k seems low

[no_time]

Any amount that doesn't change with annual inflation is too low. Without factoring that in it's an expiry date without saying it out loud.

[petre]

No problem, we'll pay in Parmigiano Reggiano cheese wheels. Bastards.

[Habgdnv]

Sorry for the long post, but I've got to vent about something... Near my office, it's almost impossible to pay with a card for food within a 1km radius. It's either cash or nothing, even though there's no shortage of places to eat. And when you do find a shop that accepts cards, they often want you to spend at least 5 to 10 euros. So, forget about using your card for just a waffle. Speaking of, I found out my favorite waffle spot operates on such tight margins (buy for .3, sell for .35 euros) that card fees would actually cause them to lose money.

Don't get me started on the times I've tried to pay by card and it just doesn't work, forcing me to always have cash on me if I don't want to skip lunch. Banks aren't much help either, with their daily withdrawal limits that make it a chore to access your own money in full. Here's what I think could help:

1. Make it mandatory for all transactions to accept card payments, no matter how small. If a card gets declined for no good reason, that meal or service should be free.

2. Banks should give 24/7 access to our money. Fail to provide that, and they should owe us big time, like 1 million euros big.

3. If authorities mistakenly place a distress or freeze on your assets without just cause, the compensation should be tenfold the standard rate—meaning 10 million euros. This ensures accountability and fairness in financial dealings.

3a. Any compensation due for mistakes, such as wrongful distress on assets, should be personally paid by the government employee responsible for the error, not sourced from government funds. This would promote diligence and personal accountability in official actions.

Maybe it sounds extreme, but something's got to give for a cashless society to work here.

[j_crick]

> If authorities mistakenly place a distress or freeze

First I wanted to write that good luck suing you government, and even if you win, getting your money in several years… Maybe…

> personally paid by the government employee responsible

… but then I continued to read, and I’m sorry but if you think any government would be willing to do that, you might be mistaken or even delusional.

The sad truth is that as a layperson you can’t do much about it, if anything at all. And no government will be willing to let you hold it accountable in any way for even the smallest amount of money, let alone millions like you suggest.

[IshKebab]

Anyone who didn't see this coming has fundamental misconceptions about how the world works. Frankly I'm surprised it took so long.

[ETH_start]

Anything anti mass-surveillance/government-control is now coded as "right wing". Even opposition to COVID lockdowns was cast as right wing and thus not appropriate to express. Unbelievable violations of human rights are now being normalized with barely resistance.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

I regularly move $10k+ between different DeFi applications and my own personal wallets. Pretty crazy stuff here

[Ylpertnodi]

Probably something to do with being a large population of people with many differing points of view.

[mrkeen]

> the EU shits all over private US business

What's your example? Only GDPR comes to mind: fuck businesses who destroy anonymity.

Now it's fuck governments who destroy anonymity.

[jowea]

Left(ish) libertarianism?

[friend_and_foe]

I like to pick on them for this too, but it doesn't bother me as much as the apologists who say things like "this doesn't affect most people, you'll still be able to do what you do." I hear "it's not boiling the frog. It's no big deal if the Dutch government keeps records of peoples religion." Europeans trust governments way too much, which is crazy seeing their history, it's almost like they're domesticated. Really bizarre to me.

[rubymamis]

F*ck them! Here we go again, letting bureaucrats limit our freedom and track us everywhere. Anyone that doesn't see how one limit leads to another should open his eyes.

[ponymontana]

study bitcoin

[ktosobcy]

I'm curious about all the outraged comments - when was the last time you used cash and when was the last time the amount was above the limit? Or the butt hurt outrage is just on principle and the sheeply is already not giving a duck? ;-)

[friend_and_foe]

A few months ago I bought a car with cash I pulled out of my bank. It was well above that limit. Nothing nefarious, just a car.

These laws aren't about limiting crime, or even about surveillance or tax compliance really. They're about ensuring that you cannot do business with peers and can only do it with corporations.

[b112]

Insane. Absolutely insane.

[mistermann]

Democracy: our most sacred institution. Anyone suggesting otherwise is {one element from the set of subconsciously planted memes}.

Will humans ever learn? All evidence I've seen is that they are determined to not.

[louwrentius]

> Anonymous cash payments over €3,000 will be banned in commercial transactions. Cash payments over €10,000 will even be completely banned in business transactions. And anonymous payments in cryptocurrencies to wallets operated by providers (hosted wallets) will be prohibited even for minimum amounts without a threshold.

For the regular person, there is no issue here. Cash is still fine, anonymous payments are possible.

Anonymous online / digital payments seems to exclusively facilitate crime, but doesn’t seem to be relevant to regular ‘normal’ people.

I think banning anonymous crypto payments is therefore a good thing.

The vast majority of people shopping online do so with their identity known and that’s totally OK (and required when buying physical stuff)

A ton of people will probably want to point out at this point that banks and merchants sell their customer data and their shopping behavior, which to me is absolute bonkers and immoral. However that’s a different issue, one that is only fixed with legislation, which makes it a political topic.

Anonymous crypto payments may also help specific dissidents in certain countries but that upside doesn’t justify the enormous downside.

[Shatnerz]

> Anonymous online / digital payments seems to exclusively facilitate crime, but doesn’t seem to be relevant to regular ‘normal’ people.

How so and is there anything to back that up or is that just a gut feeling?

I pay for my VPN subscription online, anonymously using crypto. Am I facilitating crime?

[alwayslikethis]

What if payment processors don't like what you want to sell, even when it is legal?

[Drakim]

One issue I know that drives many NSFW artists to crypto payments is that things like paypal won't service them.