Whenever someone introduces new restrictions to freedoms, there is always someone who says, 'relax, it will affect only few people'. Rinse and repeat, and this way, piece by piece, all your freedoms will be taken away.

Remember: Government is not your friend. It needs to be kept in check. Financial freedoms, untraceable transactions, etc help keep government in check. Yes, it allows crime. But guess what, when government has way too much power, opposing it becomes a crime.

I agree with the sentiment in this case, and I do think 10k is ridiculously low for this restriction and the premise of this helping money laundering doesn't sound very convincing to me. But this strawman is IMO the weakest possible argument against the whole "this affects no-one" idea.

I think the more convincing points are 1) it does actually affect many people within specific groups, e.g. business owners 2) there is no alternative that comes anywhere near the features of cash, especially reliability and acceptance combined with instantaneous transfer. I think history gives enough reason to mistrust banks in times of financial crisis, and I literally cannot reliably pay for anything without a card from a bank or credit institute - or cash.

there are more points mentioned in the comments here on HN but I realized I started rambling so I'll just stop here

> Whenever someone introduces new restrictions to freedoms, there is always someone who says, 'relax, it will affect only few people'. Rinse and repeat, and this way, piece by piece, all your freedoms will be taken away.

Yes, now I don't have the freedom to drive over the speed limit. They took that away from me!

Actually the 0.0001% will have absolutely no problem. They usually don't even own much to their own name.

This is among the measures intended for the 99%

This new rule bans transactions over 10k, but it also places restrictions on transactions as small as 1k euro.

And of course, once these rules are in place, they can lower the limit over time. Boiling the frog and all that.

You don’t need to lower the limit. Just wait for inflation to do its thing. No new legislation or public debate necessary.

Until 2019, the 500 euro note was issued. It is still legal tender, so 10K euro is just 20 notes.

Cash payments are surprisingly common for farmers, people who deal in used cars/motorcycles, etc etc.

I bought a van for $11k in cash once.