Total control by whom? Most financial transactions occur between numerous financial institutions and wiring intermediaries in between. The finance network is far more decentralized than the web even after consideration for things like SWIFT.

Your financial transactions are already tracked by numerous parties. This is neither secret nor suspect. Without visibility over the transfers, distribution, and behaviors therein how would governments and financial institutions account for ethical violations?

You made a jump that I'm have a hard time following.

Today I'm basically all digital as far as money goes. I can't remember the last time I handled coins or bills. I don't feel like I have no control over my transactions or what I do with my money.

Folks who run small businesses like grocery stores and barber shops deal with cash all the time. Also there is a large class of unbanked folks in the US. Your experience doesn't generalize to everyone.

There are a lot of benefits to cash. I believe that a digital dollar that acts like paper cash is possible, but you need a lot of technologies to make that a reality (e.g. zero-knowledge crypto, and then mechanisms to peg digital asset to fiat). It doesn't quite exist yet today.

Have a look at Canada for a recent precedent: People had their bank accounts frozen for having made donations to support the protests.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottaw...

I didn't know about this so thanks for the link.

Thank your good graces the state doesn’t freeze your account. This has only happened 1000s times before in history, most recently in Canada.

You don’t have money if it’s in the bank. The bank owes you money. Your credit card is a person liability that the bank will let you pay with their money, and they owe you less.

You have no control over your money.

This means you never have been threatened by your bank to block your account and assets. Good luck eating when that happens.

I rarely use cash as it is. No one is controlling my purchases.

Every financial institution that processes your banking activity is also making an allow/deny determination on every transaction. Sorry to break it to you.

Hardly. If a merchant accepts VISA, VISA isn't about to deny my transaction because the determination of suitability has been made before hand (assuming that I have the available credit).

There are certainly cash only markets and the unbanked, the latter a much larger issue than the former. But isn't the existence of crypto (digital currency) supposed to be the grand solution to the former problem? Or does the promises of crypto fall down when actually forced to be used as a currency in a mainstream sense?

Every transaction is subject to OFAC rules.