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.

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

> 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...

Like frogs boiling in water.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

study bitcoin

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? ;-)

Insane. Absolutely insane.

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.

> 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.