The introduction of the revelatory "mark of the beast". No one will be able to [legally] buy or sell without it. I suspect anyone that tries to barter or trade outside of the system will be considered and labeled a criminal for operating in black markets or tax evasion.

Multiple European countries already forbid cash payments over a few thousands euros. In my country the law is just being proposed: anything over 3000€ must be done using electronic systems (read: banks) or you risk getting a fine equivalent to 25% of the amount over the limit.

Am I the only one who find this.. upsetting? It basically means Government will know every money you have owed and spent.

What is the reasoning behind this?

Likely anti money laundering legislation.

Yes, and also tax evasion and fraud.

Fun fact: The SF innovation center of Visa has t-shirts which literally say "The Mark" on them. Though supposedly in reference to [this guy](https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/innovation-centers/san-...).

Oh but I have heard people claiming the contrary: that banks are actually using a number for transaction and it has 666 embedded into it.

okay, if you believe stuff like that, it's hard to take you seriously. 666, the devil, he's there in your transaction? I remember when conservatives didn't like that unix has daemons. That was not particuarly a useful concern.

I guess this is a sarcastic reference to the "barcodes contain 666" conspiracy theory.

http://www.av1611.org/666/barcode.html

> If either party falls out of favour with the bank, they can't do business with each other.

For an immediately ready example, I present Paypal Seller/Buyer disputes on eBay.

I'm always a little tickled by tech people hyping the idea of a cashless society. Don't we all hate Paypal?

> Don't we all hate Paypal?

Also don't forget that Peter Thiel got really rich by selling Paypal to eBay in 2002. After that in 2003 he founded Palantir Technologies - a company that produces surveillance software for the three letter agencies.

I often like to say that getting lots of money does not make you a bad person, but brings your true character traits to light.

Palantir is a data analysis system, not a data collection system.

A data analysis system primarily used by cops and spies that's also integrated with the spies' collection system.

Doesn't mean it cannot be surveillance software

Pretty much. I tried using my account from France, and now my account is locked, and there are a bunch of hoops to jump through to restore access. No thanks.

It's a matter of better governance though. Ideally, anti-trust government entities should monitor how companies like PayPal operate.

So, "ideally", we'd

1) ban cash, so that humans need permission to interact when an exchange of value is involved;

2) improve the oversight of the permission-givers, so that the permission-giver-watchers are less arbitrary and annoying, in order to fix the problem that never existed before point 1.

Other than lining the pockets of poor, underfed bankers and giving busy-bodies veto power over our interactions with others, what problem are we solving again?

I believe that the main reasonable concern with large transactions of money is mostly buyer/seller protection, for large sums of money. When buying, say, a house/car and spending well over €/£/$ 3k (typical over-3k transaction), it is customary to have a series of formalities/assurances so that both parties are protected against fraud. These formalities require the kind of proof (that money exchanged hands) that generally only banks can provide.

I fully agree that this places a big amount of power in the banks' hands, but what alternatives are there? (I'm honestly asking, are banks the lesser/only evil here?)

I'm not seeing cryptocurrency fixing this, but maybe it is possible. From my limited understanding, if transactions were mapped to some contract, it would void some anonymity of the system, and it probably wouldn't be possible to get money back in case of fraud anyway, so there's that.

Do we have anything that provide the best of both world?

I don't trust the governments and nanny states. Does that qualify as anti-trust? Better governance is lack of it, lack of corrupt government officials that work hand in hand with the financial institutions that sponsor them to take our freedoms away for their mutual benefit.

Or, for an even scarier example, the way that payment processors have forced FetLife to restrict the kinds of (legal!) fetishes people are allowed to discuss on the site.

I've experienced that directly more than once. Trying to use a credit card online to purchase from a merchant that the banks --- all of them! --- refused to process my payment. This was for legal products from an established seller.

The banks were happy to charge a big fee to send a bank wire or cashiers check. Just wouldn't deal with a credit card.

It's obviously because the bank ends up on the hook for liability in the case of disputed or reversed charges. They judged that market to be too likely to result in their losses so they simply refused to let me do business with the seller I wanted to use.

Bitcoin, bro.

Bitcoin is (without further tricks) only pseudonymous, not anonymous.

The concern expressed above was not about anonymity, but about requiring the approval of a third party to carry out a transaction. (Although I'm pretty sure Bitcoin does that too, but with multiple third parties in the form of miners.)