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In the last few decades, there has been a global shift towards a “cashless world,” a trend that continues to shape financial autonomy. Physical currency is becoming increasingly rare as the majority of the world’s money supply exists in electronic form. Governments and financial institutions are actively promoting a cashless society, raising concerns about individual financial freedom.

The Federal Reserve’s last annual update on physical currency in circulation reported about 2.2 trillion dollars in physical cash supply. This includes physical coins (dimes, quarters, dollars) and green Federal Reserve notes. Nevertheless, there has been a rapid shift towards electronic funds. In the current era, the total global money supply is predominantly composed of electronic funds, with physical currency representing a diminishing percentage.

The concept of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) in the last year has gained substantial prominence globally. IMF Director Kistalina Georgieva noted in her speech last year that CBDCs have already been introduced in The Bahamas, Jamaica, and Nigeria, with over 100 additional countries (including the United States) currently in the exploratory phase.

The push towards a cashless society is often justified on grounds of enhanced security, with claims that electronic transactions deter terrorism, money laundering, and counterfeiting. However, upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that the primary objective is an attempt to ‘bar the doors’ and keep assets within the US Financial System. Reduced reliance on physical cash facilitates increased monitoring and taxation of financial transactions, aligning with the government’s and central planners’ interests.

Interestingly, even with the diminishing purchasing power of the US dollar, the face value of Federal Reserve notes has also been decreasing. Today, the highest denomination note produced by the Federal Reserve is the $100 note. The elimination of higher denominations, such as $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 notes, began in 1969. Discussions continue, with some advocating for the complete discontinuation of cash.

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War on Cash: India Rolling Out Retail Pilot Program for Digital Rupee

November 25, 2022

War on Cash: India Rolling Out Retail Pilot Program for Digital Rupee

NOVEMBER 23, 2022 BY SCHIFFGOLD 0 1

We recently reported that the Federal Reserve plans to launch a 12-week pilot program in partnership with several large commercial banks to test the feasibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The US isn’t alone in experimenting with digital currency. India is working on developing a digital rupee and recently announced the second phase of testing.

After successfully running a pilot program to test its digital currency at the wholesale level, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced it will test the digital rupee in a retail setting.

According to the RBI, the central bank digital currency “is a legal tender issued by a central bank in a digital form. It is the same as a fiat currency and is exchangeable one-to-one with the fiat currency. Only its form is different.”

Digital currencies are similar to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They exist as virtual banknotes or coins held in a digital wallet on your computer or smartphone. The difference between a government digital currency and bitcoin is the value of the digital currency is backed and controlled by the state, just like traditional fiat currency.

As the RBI put it, “Unlike cryptocurrencies, a CBDC isn’t a commodity or claims on commodities or digital assets. Cryptocurrencies have no issuer. They are not money (certainly not currency) as the word has come to be understood historically.”

According to a report in the Economic Times of India, the National Payments Corporation of India will host the platform for the digital rupee payment system during the testing phase. The Reserve Bank of India wants each commercial bank in the pilot to test retail use of the digital rupee with 10,000 to 50,000 users.

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The War on Cash & the Dollar

January 3, 2022

The War on Cash & the Dollar

I have warned that Europe is the epic center for the decline and fall of Western Culture and economic strength. While the US has not yet joined Europe, the Democrats are licking their lips and trying desperately to figure out how to kill cash forcing everything to be digital in search of cash. In Europe, 18 EU countries are now restricting the use of cash and they are desperately trying to terminate cash all for control and taxes. Now it is just presumed that paying in cash means you are engaged in money laundering for that definition has been expanded to just tax avoidance.

Once upon a time, Belgium had an upper limit of €15,000 for transactions in cash. In 2012, they lowered that to €5,000, and then in 2014, they brought it down to €3,000. Bulgaria has outlawed cash payments of around €5,100 euros (10,000 Bulgarian levs) since 2016. A proposed law that has been pending since 2017 will lower that to just €500. The central bank informed the politicians it would not comply with such a low limit. The politicians even went as far as the use of the 500 euro note would have been a punishable criminal offense.

Over in Denmark since July 1, 2021, any payment of up to about 2,700 euros (20,000 Danish kroner [DKK]) is allowed whereas the previous limit was DKK 50,000 since 2013. Prior to that, the limit was from 2006 was DKK 100,000 and once more they claim this is all about combatting money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

France, the origin of communist theory, has been trying to outlaw cash for years. Today, a cash payment limitation stands at €1,000 since 2015. That was lowered from a limitation of €3,000 which was implemented in 2010. In Greece, as of the end of 2016, the upper limit on cash was just €500…

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“Programmable Digital Currency”: The next stage of the new normal?The war on cash’s endgame is here: money replaced by vouchers subject to complete state control.

October 10, 2021

“Programmable Digital Currency”: The next stage of the new normal?The war on cash’s endgame is here: money replaced by vouchers subject to complete state control.

Building on the bitcoin model, central banks are planning to produce their own “digital currencies”. Removing any and all remaining privacy, granting total control over every transaction, even limiting what ordinary people are allowed to spend their money on.

From the moment bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies first emerged, sold as an independent and alternative medium of exchange outside the financial status quo, it was only a matter of time before the new alternative would be absorbed, modified and redeployed in service of the state.

Enter “Central Bank Digital Currencies”: the mainstream answer to bitcoin.

For those who have never heard of them, “Central Bank Digital Currencies” (CBDCs) are exactly what they sound like, digitized versions of the pound/dollar/euro etc. issued by central banks.

Like bitcoin (and other crypto), the CBDC would be entirely digital, thus furthering the ongoing war on cash. However, unlike crypto, it would not have any encryption preserving anonymity. In fact, it would be totally the reverse, potentially ending the very idea of financial privacy.

Now, you may not have heard much about the CBDC plans, lost as they are in the tangle of the ongoing “pandemic”, but the campaign is there, chugging along on the back pages for months now. There are stories about it from both Reuters and the Financial Times just today. It’s a long, slow con, but a con nonetheless.

The countries where the idea progressed the furthest are China and the UK. The Chinese Digital Yuan has been in development since 2014, and is subject to ongoing and widespread testing. The UK is nowhere near that stage yet, but Chancellor Rishi Sunak is keenly pushing forward a digital pound that the press are calling “Britcoin”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

One Ring to Rule Us All: A Global Digital Fiat Currency

October 10, 2021

One Ring to Rule Us All: A Global Digital Fiat Currency

We’ve written extensively about the “war on cash.” In a nutshell, governments would love to do away with cash in order to better track and control their citizens. There have been numerous moves closer to a cashless society in recent years, from capping ATM withdrawals to doing away with large-denomination bills. Last year, China launched a digital yuan pilot program and the US has floated moving toward a digital dollar.

We got a first-hand look at what happens when governments restrict access to cash when India plunged into a cash crisis after the country’s government enacted a policy of demonetization in November 2016.

It’s bad enough that various countries are exploring ways to move toward cashlessness, but there’s an even worse scenario — a global digital currency.

Economist Thorsten Polleit compares it to the “master ring” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic Lord of the Rings.

The following article was originally published by the Mises Wire. The opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

1.

Human history can be viewed from many angles. One of them is to see it as a struggle for power and domination, as a struggle for freedom and against oppression, as a struggle of good against evil.

That is how Karl Marx (1818–83) saw it, and Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) judged similarly. Mises wrote:

The history of the West, from the age of the Greek Polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders. (1}

But unlike Marx, Mises recognized that human history does not follow predetermined laws of societal development but ultimately depends on ideas that drive human action.

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The War On Cash, Is It A Real Thing? The Answer Is Yes

September 17, 2021

The War On Cash, Is It A Real Thing? The Answer Is Yes

In our bizarre economy, we hear many things, and ideas are constantly being thrown out to us. This all tends to flow together and help us develop a strategy as to how we should cope with the changing times. One thing we continue to hear is that a war is being waged to eliminate cash. Not only are most people going along with this but many have embraced the notion.Some people view carrying cash as dangerous or burdensome. This also dovetails with their desire to spend more than they can afford, when using a credit card it is far easier to continue spending money you do not have. All things considered, when asked, is the war on cash a real thing being directed from those on high, sadly we must answer yes. Cash reflects “options for the people” and it appears those in charge of such things want in gone.

Currencies were developed to facilitate and ease transactions between individuals and businesses. The war on cash is simply another way Washington can continue to show its favoritism towards big business. Small businesses often rely more on small cash transactions and often lack the ability to process other forms of payment. It is ironic that while big businesses and companies like Amazon flourish with each move government makes, the small businesses on Main Street are left worse off.

Your Wealth Will Be Locked In A Computer

A cashless society where records are made and kept reflecting every transaction we make even down to buying a candy bar also allows the government to monitor our every move. This is something Big Brother-type governments strongly aspire to under the guise it will extend its ability to protect us or tamp down on crime, tax evasion, and corruption……click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

COVID-19 and the War on Cash: What Is Behind the Push for a Cashless Society? [SHORT]

April 15, 2020

COVID-19 and the War on Cash: What Is Behind the Push for a Cashless Society? [SHORT]

Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.

Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).

To this end, the government and its corporate partners-in-crime have been waging a subtle war on cash for some time now.

What is this war on cash?

It’s a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

According to economist Steve Forbes, “The real reason for this war on cash—start with the big bills and then work your way down—is an ugly power grab by Big Government. People will have less privacy: Electronic commerce makes it easier for Big Brother to see what we’re doing, thereby making it simpler to bar activities it doesn’t like, such as purchasing salt, sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs.”

Much like the war on drugs and the war on terror, this so-called “war on cash” is being sold to the public as a means of fighting terrorists, drug dealers, tax evaders and now COVID-19 germs.

Digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with the ultimate method to track, control you and punish you.

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The Frontlines in the War on Cash

May 1, 2019

The Frontlines in the War on Cash

Let’s face it, many forces are pushing for the abolition of – or at least serious restrictions on – cash.

Many businesses hate cash, because cash transactions take longer to process, and large quantities of cash pose a security risk. If you travel by air, you’ve experienced this first-hand. “Cashless cabins” are the rule for most airlines. You must purchase every glass of wine, cheese dip, or package of mixed nuts with a credit or debit card.

In Atlanta, you can’t even buy a hot dog at a pro football or soccer game with cash. In March, the operators of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United, announced it would no longer accept cash at food and beverage concession stands.

Credit card companies hate cash too. And for obvious reasons – they get a cut of every purchase through the fees they charge businesses. So it’s no surprise that in 2017, Visa announced its “Cashless Challenge” and gave $10,000 to 50 small businesses that stopped accepting cash payments.

Big brother hates cash, too. For decades, governments around the globe have engaged in a War on Cash. The original justification for this war was to fight racketeering. The War on Cash then morphed into the War on Drugs, the War on Money Laundering, and subsequently, the War on Terror.

Numerous countries have placed severe limits on how much cash you can spend at one time.

Spain and France have banned cash transactions over €1,000. If you want to spend more than that, you must use a debit card, credit card, a non-transferrable check, or pay by bank transfer. In Italy, where the cash limit is €3,000, violations are punished by confiscation of up to 40% of the amount paid. In Spain, you lose “only” 25% of your cash if you violate the rules. Similar restrictions are in place in most EU countries. Later this year, Australia will ban cash transactions larger than AU$10,000 (about US$7,500).

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Global De-Banking On The Rise? $100 Bills See Mysterious Surge In Circulation

March 4, 2019

Global De-Banking On The Rise? $100 Bills See Mysterious Surge In Circulation

It has been three years since the establishment launched its official ‘war on cash’ by eliminating Europe’s €500 bill, under the pretense that this effort would be fighting financial crime, terrorism, corruption and drug dealers.

Of course, as we wrote at the time, what Europe and the rest of the world’s elites would be truly doing is setting the scene for ever more aggressive NIRP, and by removing the highest denomination bank notes, it would make evading negative rates that much more difficult and costly (albeit would certainly favor gold).

How did the ‘war on cash’ workout? Not so well, as CNBC’s Kate Rooney points out, the amount of $100 bills in circulation is surging. And it’s leaving some economists scratching their heads.

The number of outstanding U.S. $100 bills has doubled since the financial crisis, with more than 12 billion of them across the world, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. C-notes have passed $1 bills in circulation, Deutsche Bank chief international economist Torsten Slok said in a note to clients this week.

Generally, economists believe the surge is related to people around the world wanting to hoard cash, a similar force that’s driven the interest in cryptocurrencies. High denomination, high value currency notes have historically been a preferred form of payment for criminals, given the anonymity, lack of transaction record and relative ease with which they can be brought across borders.

Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, has been down the “rabbit hole of a topic” for more than a decade. He said the growth in $100 bills in circulation is a signal the world is relying on them as a store of value — and still using them for international crime.

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The War Against Cash

December 14, 2018

The War Against Cash

Where every keystroke becomes part of one’s permanent record, where e-devices track one’s every move, the ability to pay physical cash for a financial transaction may have become the only off-the-record action one can execute, unless, of course, it’s recorded on one of the ubiquitous security cams. But signs are everywhere that this last freedom is slated for oblivion. Many paths appear aimed toward a global monetary system in which every buy/sell exchange, from castle to candy bar, is recorded onto the accumulating history of each human unit. The trick has been to prepare the public in step-wise, frog-in-gradually-heated-water fashion.

“There is nothing, however, in standard theories of money that requires transactions to be anonymous from tax- or law-enforcement authorities.” —Kenneth Rogoff, 2014

In 2014, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff (winner of the 2011 Deutsche Bank Prize and a former chief economist for the IMF) authored “Costs and Benefits to Phasing Out Paper Currency” in which he wrote “Paper currency facilitates making transactions anonymous, helping conceal activities from the government in a way that might help agents avoid laws, regulations and taxes…. [E]lectronic money, in principle, can be traced by the government.” 78% of U.S. currency in circulation is in $100 bills, and similar high/low denomination ratios are seen in Japan and the EU. That large denomination bills are the preferred currency for much of crime — drug running, money laundering, tax-evasion — has become the prime argument for doing away with them in favor of electronic money. In 2017, Rogoff published a book on his theories, The Curse of Cash. Other prominent economists, e.g. former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, have, likewise, advocated dropping currency. The discussions have generally focused on large denomination bills only, $100, $50, perhaps $20. Still, Rogoff has written flatly that “Currency should be becoming technologically obsolete”.

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Backlash Against War on Cash Reaches the Bank of Canada

October 22, 2018

Backlash Against War on Cash Reaches the Bank of Canada

A cashless society could have “adverse collective outcomes.”

In recent months, a slew of political and financial institutions have raised concerns about the march toward a cashless economy. They include:

The ECB warned that a phase-out of cash could pose a serious risk to the financial system. Depending too heavily on electronic payment systems could expose financial systems to catastrophic failures in the event of power outages or cyber attacks. The European Commission has also backed off is war on cash.
The People’s Bank of China announced that all businesses in China that are not e-commerce must resume accepting cash or risk being investigated, and cautioned businesses against hyping the “cashless” idea when promoting non-cash payments.
In Sweden, one of the most cashless societies, the central bank and parliament have spoken out in support of cash.
Cities too have spoken out, including Washington D.C., whose City Council introduced a bill that sought to ban restaurants and retailers from not accepting cash or charging a different price to customers depending on the method of payment they use.

Now, it’s the Bank of Canada’s turn to sound the alarm. In a paper — “Is a Cashless Society Problematic?” — it outlines a number of risks that could arise if the country went fully cashless.

The premise underpinning the analysis is that at some point in the future individuals and firms decide, of their own volition, to cease using cash altogether. In response, the central bank stops printing physical money because of the large fixed costs inherent in supplying bank notes.

In such a scenario, even though most individuals and firms freely choose to abandon cash, there could be “adverse collective outcomes,” the study warns.

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Mexico’s Central Bank Just Broke with the War on Cash

September 3, 2018

Mexico’s Central Bank Just Broke with the War on Cash

Motivated by inflation?

A strange thing just happened in Mexico. The Bank of Mexico (Banxico), announced that it is considering launching a 2,000 peso note (ca. $105), double the highest denomination note currently in circulation. It’s also considering doing away with Mexico’s lowest denomination 20 peso bill (ca. $1.05), which will be replaced by a coin with the same face value.

Not everyone’s happy about the proposal, which forms part of a range of measures aimed at updating Mexico’s currency notes. Miguel González Ibarra, director of the Center for Financial Studies and Public Finance of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said that introducing a higher denomination bill flies in the face of the broad trend among advanced economies to weed out such notes.

In 2016 Peter Sands, the former CEO of the British bank Standard Chartered, set the tone of the debate when he published a report for Harvard Kennedy School of Government imploring central banks around the world to stop issuing high-denomination notes and bills. They include the €500 note, the $100 bill, the CHF1,000 note and the £50 note. This is the first rule of the war on cash: make high-denomination notes taboo in law-abiding circles.

“Such notes are the preferred payment mechanism of those pursuing illicit activities, given the anonymity and lack of transaction record they offer, and the relative ease with which they can be transported and moved,” the report warned. In other words, only criminals use cash. High-denomination notes, the report added, “play little role in the functioning of the legitimate economy, yet a crucial role in the underground economy.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Are ATMs Disappearing at an Alarming Rate after a Wave of Branch Closures?

August 16, 2018

Why Are ATMs Disappearing at an Alarming Rate after a Wave of Branch Closures?

Banks are curtailing “cash services.” But why?

In Australia, banks are reducing ATMs by about 8% a year. In the UK, ATMs — or cashpoint machines, as they’re termed locally — are disappearing at a rate of around 300 per month, leaving consumers in rural areas struggling to access cash, according to a new report by the consumers’ association, Which? The rate of closures has increased sixfold in the period from November 2017 to April this year from a steady pace of 50 per month since 2015.

Banks in Spain have closed around 40% of their branches over the past ten years, on the back of unprecedented industry consolidation and cost cutting. In Barcelona, there are now less than half the number of branches there were in 2008. But it’s in small towns and villages where the impact is being felt most keenly. According to new research, by 2016 as many as 4,114 municipalities — the equivalent of 50.7% of all urban settlements — had no bank branches at all.

Banks in Spain are are also shutting down many of their ATMs. In 2017, the biggest lenders withdrew over 1,100 cash machines — around 3% of the national total. BBVA, Spain’s second biggest lender mothballed 192 ATMs (2.9% of its total stock) last year; Bankia, 301 (4.8%); Caixabank, 47 (0.5%), and Banco Sabadell 541 cash machines, the equivalent of 15% of its total stock.

This is all happening at a time when banks in Spain are making it more and more difficult to access cash from the branches that remain open. As we previously reported, Spain’s third largest lender, CaixaBank, last year launched a pilot project in Madrid aimed at limiting cash services in their branches to less than three hours a day, from 8:15 am to 11 am.

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The EU Backs Off its War on Cash. Here’s Why

July 31, 2018

The EU Backs Off its War on Cash. Here’s Why

People view paying in cash “as a fundamental freedom, which should not be disproportionately restricted.”

The European Commission, in its official war on cash, admitted that physical cash is perhaps not quite the source of all evil that many EU institutions, including the Commission itself, had made it out to be. And it has abandoned its war on cash.

In a report to the European Parliament and Council on the viability of EU-wide cash payment restrictions, the Commission made three crucial observations.

1. Cash restrictions would have little effect on terrorist financing

Cash plays a major role in many terrorist activities, “offering anonymity and facilitating the ability to conceal not only illegal activities, but also ancillary legal transactions that could otherwise be tracked by law enforcement agencies,” the report points out. But according to the findings of a detailed analysis of recent terrorist attacks, restrictions on payments in cash would have had little impact on the capacity to prepare these attacks, especially given the “observed trend of the decreasing costs of terrorist attacks.”

The amounts of individual transactions are often even lower, and would therefore not have been impacted by restrictions. What’s more, many common transactions made in the preparation of recent terrorist attacks were done using traceable means (credit and debit cards, bank transfers, etc.) without raising any red flags.

2. Cash restrictions could be useful in combating money laundering but are of limited help against tax fraud.

The report notes that cash limits could be a useful tool in the fight against money laundering, of which cash transactions are normally the starting point. Despite the steady growth in non-cash payment methods and the changing face of criminality (i.e., the rise in cybercrime, online fraud and illicit online market places), criminal activities continue to generate profits in the form of large amounts of cash.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Backlash Against “War on Cash” Reaches Washington & China

July 22, 2018

Backlash Against “War on Cash” Reaches Washington & China

The electronic-payments industry, which gets a cut from every electronic transaction, wants to kill cash. But wait…

Not so long ago, it seemed that the death of cash was both inevitable and imminent. The war against physical money was advancing on all fronts. Cash, already with technological and generational trends stacked against it, faced an imposing array of enemies, including private banks, fintech firms, telecom behemoths, credit card giants, assorted NGOs, tech magnates like Bill Gates and Tim Cook, a bewildering alphabet soup of UN agencies and many national governments. All wanted (and to a great extent still want) to accelerate the demise of physical money, for their own disparate motives.

But a study released in June by UK-based online payments company Paysafe confirmed that consumers on both sides of the Atlantic continue to cling to physical lucre: 87% of consumers surveyed in the UK, Canada, the US, Germany, and Austria said they had used cash to make purchases in the last month, 83% visited ATMs, and 41% said they are not interested in even hearing about cash alternatives.

Now, even certain branches of government are pushing back against the cashless trend. In Washington D.C., city councilors have introduced a new bill that would make it illegal for restaurants and retailers not to accept cash or charge a different price to customers depending on the type of payment they use. The bill is in response to efforts by retailers in the city and around the country – like the salad chain Sweetgreen – to go 100% cashless.

Such moves have been decried as discriminatory against the roughly one-quarter of people in the U.S. who would have trouble using a card or some other electronic means of payment, not to mention those who would just prefer to use cash. “Certain underbanked customers have to use cash; they don’t have other alternatives.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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