[HN Gopher] EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on ...
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EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous
crypto payments
Author : ruiseal
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-03-22 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.patrick-breyer.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.patrick-breyer.de)
| rubymamis wrote:
| 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.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Insane. Absolutely insane.
| carimura wrote:
| Like frogs boiling in water.
| chmod775 wrote:
| You know they're full of shit when CTRL+F "terror" on the full
| text of that regulation gets 195 hits.
| louwrentius wrote:
| > Anonymous cash payments over EUR3,000 will be banned in
| commercial transactions. Cash payments over EUR10,000 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.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| What if payment processors don't like what you want to sell,
| even when it is legal?
| louwrentius wrote:
| Tough luck. Doesn't justify a huge avenue of money laundering
| of whatever is possible
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| I doubt you would have said the same if it affected you.
| lxgr wrote:
| To be honest, I don't think that attitude is good enough.
| There are technical ways to prevent money laundering and
| tax evasion at the same time as keeping anonymous payments
| possible.
|
| Sure, it's more complicated than just outright banning any
| type of anonymous payment, but I think not even trying
| would amount to a huge loss of resiliency for any
| democracy.
|
| We also don't blanket ban secure private communications
| (although not for a lack of trying) for the same reason.
| Drakim wrote:
| One issue I know that drives many NSFW artists to crypto
| payments is that things like paypal won't service them.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Sure that's a problem for them, but rather niche and doesn't
| seem to justify this huge avenue for "crime"
| bombcar wrote:
| The number one thing criminals are known for is following
| the law, so they will absolutely be certain never to
| accidentally do a cash payment over the limit.
| arp242 wrote:
| Yeah, that type of thing is a problem. I feel that anyone
| operating a legal business should be able to receive
| payments. I don't know what the best way to achieve that
| would be: make it illegal for payment processors to refuse
| customers registered with the chamber of commerce? Set up a
| community bank to handle this? Something else? Idk.
|
| That said, one of my gripes with a lot of this cryptostuff is
| that people want it to both be recognized as real money, but
| also not be beholden to any regulation they don't like. Can't
| have both.
| Shatnerz wrote:
| > 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?
| lxgr wrote:
| > I pay for my VPN subscription online, anonymously using
| crypto. Am I facilitating crime?
|
| No, and you'll continue to be able to do so under the new
| regulation unless I'm missing something.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Anyone who didn't see this coming has fundamental misconceptions
| about how the world works. Frankly I'm surprised it took so long.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Note that this is a committee approval, not a final parliament
| approval
|
| And yes the limit on 3k/10k seems low
| no_time wrote:
| 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.
| hexo wrote:
| The cash limit now is like 5k euros. It sucks but the new cap is
| outrageous.
| lxgr wrote:
| 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 <EUR5000 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).
| bbarnett wrote:
| The thing is, limits like this are never, ever raised.
|
| 40 years ago Canada got rid of the $1000 and $500 note. In
| all that time, the idea of bringing the $500 back has never
| been floated.
|
| Yet soon, $100 will be worth $20 back then. I already find
| myself using $100s all the time, I used to fill my car for
| $25 in the 80s, now it's $80. Groceries are the same, I used
| to buy $30 per week, now it's over $100.
|
| As time progresses, you'll have to carry a briefcase to buy
| gas or groceries.
|
| So 5000 may seem like a good limit, but in 20 years you may
| not be able to buy groceries, or get gas, or buy a computer
| with cash or record keeping.
|
| I always pay cash for my hardware. I don't need the store to
| link my serial number to my credit card number. I'm already
| using MAC addresses off of old ISA NIC cards.
| arp242 wrote:
| I carried wads of cash when I lived in Indonesia, because
| card acceptance is so unreliable it's easier to just pay by
| cash. Bills of 100,000 (~EUR6.50) are the largest, and
| while prices are lower than in Europe or Canada, they're
| not necessarily that much lower for a lot of things. It's a
| bit awkward, but doable I guess _shrug_.
|
| I paid 6 million in cash for my scooter, and you can
| imagine what that looked like. Upshot is I felt very rich
| and like one of those fellas in those rap videos throwing
| around money.
| mistermann wrote:
| 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.
| quadcore wrote:
| _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 wrote:
| Where KYC means Know Your Customer.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I regularly move $10k+ between different DeFi applications and my
| own personal wallets. Pretty crazy stuff here
| camdenlock wrote:
| When the EU shits all over private US business, you guys are like
| HELL YEAH, FUCK THE BOURGEOISIE, but when the EU tries to destroy
| cryptocurrencies, you guys are like HELP HELP I'M BEING OPPRESSED
|
| Why is that?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Probably something to do with being a large population of
| people with many differing points of view.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| And people can have different opinions on different
| regulations.
| jowea wrote:
| Left(ish) libertarianism?
| ponymontana wrote:
| study bitcoin
| petre wrote:
| No problem, we'll pay in Parmigiano Reggiano cheese wheels.
| Bastards.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| 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? ;-)
| arp242 wrote:
| > 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 EUR (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 wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2024-03-22 23:02 UTC)