For example: in Canada, the bank accounts of those who protested were literally frozen (for simply speaking out or being critical) and talks of potential CBDCs (aka. used to deduct funds from one's account as a fine) whilst considering on abolishing cash altogether.
The alternative (for now at least) may be Crypto (online) until they consider that "illegal" in the future penalizing those who are using it, framing that as money laundering or tax evasion, whilst pushing their propaganda of "tap & go is safe & convenient".
The answers are divided between:
- "Cash is King" (it allows anonymous or "private" transactions between you and the merchant)
- "Contactless" (convenient, but your purchases & transactions are monitored by the state)
Cash is apparently the last bastion of "anonymous" transactions where it doesn't appear on one's statement and one gets to keep their money without the state deducting it from their account since a nation's central bank has monopoly over CBDCs and one's funds.
That's not even the end of it: them trying to make BTC or equivalent illegal by making CBDCs the default replacing gold overnight, it would mean all those bills you have are worthless. At this point, the only payment method is CBDCs that are linked to one's digital ID.
If you rub out the serial number, I wonder if that would void the “valid for all US debt” designation on the bill… I mean, yeah the bill is damaged but it’s not like you can’t use damaged bills. I wonder how the legal argument would work here.
However, I think they could redesign the next years bill to print serials much larger / several times / encoded some other way. They could probably do it so that there will always be a readable serial, unless you completely destroy the bill.
It’s illegal in the US for sure and it would be worthless but I don’t think a random cashier would enforce it. In Canada you can’t mess with the coins but there’s no law protecting their plastic/paper money