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I'm not sure how you can call it worse than the status quo. Last week my bank informed me that I passed my ATM limit for the year and it's going to give me a s

I'm not sure how you can call it worse than the status quo. Last week my bank informed me that I passed my ATM limit for the year and it's going to give me a small daily allowance for the rest of the year. And then lied me on the phone that it's a requirement from the central bank. This is neither a joke nor a metaphor - this literally happened to me this month (ING in Romania -they're widely considered the best bank here). Ah, they're an ATM-only bank, they have no tellers, so I can simply not take my money out, unless I make an account with another bank and have it transferred. And this just means I'm going to hit another set of limits. There is a concerted effort to control the financial movements of the population. If you fit within common patterns you don't see it. I'm probably barely at the edge - I've moved on the order of tens of thousands - and I'm hitting it pretty hard. Revolut had my account completely blocked for a couple of months earlier this year, while completely ignoring my calls. Couldn't even close it, since it was not on zero and couldn't take money out of it. And this was for moving around on the order of thousands over a few months, mostly sending money to a few friends. This is not money laundering, this is simply using the money I make very legitimately and paying taxes for.

distances 5y ago
I'd like to hear more about such limits. Do they base it on total money withdrawn, or number of withdrawals? If you don't mind, what was the limit approximately? Is it only about cash withdrawals, can you use card and online payments as before?
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  About 60k eur anually. It's ironic, but a fair share of my withdrawals were simply because the pandemic made me want to have a cash reserve on hand, in case of emergencies. Plus a used car purchase and some renovations. Very white money, taxes already paid.
  - distances 5y ago
    Interesting that there's a limit. That's also probably many times more than I have withdrawn in my whole lifetime.
  - rini17 5y ago
    Aren't cash transactions over 5000 eur illegal in whole EU? The limit certainly stems from there (even if it isn't explicitly set by central bank). I'd definitely have lawyer on retainer if I personally moved 60k/year in cash around.
jobigoud 5y ago
The worse than status quo comment of the grandparent refers to privacy, in the current system your bank (and whomever they sell the data to) knows everything, in a public and transparent ledger possibly everyone knows about what you use your coins for. It's not the case of Bitcoin right now but this move is concerning in this regard.
acdha 5y ago
Worse from the perspective of privacy: right now, if you use cash your transactions are not traceable and if you use electronic systems they're subject to whatever rules the institutions you use have (e.g. your bank definitely knows who you interacted with for as long as they retain that data). Bitcoin, on the other hand, makes every transaction public and permanent so anyone in the world can track you and they can retroactively link your activity at any point in the future. If you're trying to stay anonymous, every transaction you make is an opportunity to have your identity permanently revealed if you or the other party are compromised. If, say, you make a donation to a political campaign now and power changes hands a couple of years later, there's no way to retroactively scrub that record. People will say “oh, use a tumbler” — which is again putting a permanent “I'm trying to hide illegal activity” flag up in any of the situations where you really need it (not to mention the risk of being caught in someone else's activity and having to explain that you had no idea that you were using the same tumbler as a mafioso). Note that I'm definitely not saying that the status quo is great, only that I think it's worse to make promises which the system cannot deliver. If people actually believe the Bitcoin salespeople and act as if it's privacy-preserving, they're at more risk than doing nothing at all.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  > People will say “oh, use a tumbler” — which is again putting a permanent “I'm trying to hide illegal activity” flag up in any of the situations where you really need it This is probably a correct analysis. It's very disheartening though. Replace tumbler with encryption and you'll get the picture. My desire for privacy shouldn't be a reason to "Minority Report" me. By the way, I know you didn't say otherwise - I'm just pointing out how bad the status quo can be.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Oh, I agree — the part of me which grew up reading the CYPHERPUNKS-L list wants this to work but one of the big things I've learned is how all of the fun cryptography is just a tiny part of a social system.

distances 5y ago

I'd like to hear more about such limits. Do they base it on total money withdrawn, or number of withdrawals? If you don't mind, what was the limit approximately? Is it only about cash withdrawals, can you use card and online payments as before?

radu_floricica 5y ago
About 60k eur anually. It's ironic, but a fair share of my withdrawals were simply because the pandemic made me want to have a cash reserve on hand, in case of emergencies. Plus a used car purchase and some renovations. Very white money, taxes already paid.
- distances 5y ago
  Interesting that there's a limit. That's also probably many times more than I have withdrawn in my whole lifetime.
- rini17 5y ago
  Aren't cash transactions over 5000 eur illegal in whole EU? The limit certainly stems from there (even if it isn't explicitly set by central bank). I'd definitely have lawyer on retainer if I personally moved 60k/year in cash around.

jobigoud 5y ago

The worse than status quo comment of the grandparent refers to privacy, in the current system your bank (and whomever they sell the data to) knows everything, in a public and transparent ledger possibly everyone knows about what you use your coins for. It's not the case of Bitcoin right now but this move is concerning in this regard.

acdha 5y ago

Worse from the perspective of privacy: right now, if you use cash your transactions are not traceable and if you use electronic systems they're subject to whatever rules the institutions you use have (e.g. your bank definitely knows who you interacted with for as long as they retain that data). Bitcoin, on the other hand, makes every transaction public and permanent so anyone in the world can track you and they can retroactively link your activity at any point in the future. If you're trying to stay anonymous, every transaction you make is an opportunity to have your identity permanently revealed if you or the other party are compromised. If, say, you make a donation to a political campaign now and power changes hands a couple of years later, there's no way to retroactively scrub that record. People will say “oh, use a tumbler” — which is again putting a permanent “I'm trying to hide illegal activity” flag up in any of the situations where you really need it (not to mention the risk of being caught in someone else's activity and having to explain that you had no idea that you were using the same tumbler as a mafioso). Note that I'm definitely not saying that the status quo is great, only that I think it's worse to make promises which the system cannot deliver. If people actually believe the Bitcoin salespeople and act as if it's privacy-preserving, they're at more risk than doing nothing at all.

cassianoleal 5y ago
> People will say “oh, use a tumbler” — which is again putting a permanent “I'm trying to hide illegal activity” flag up in any of the situations where you really need it This is probably a correct analysis. It's very disheartening though. Replace tumbler with encryption and you'll get the picture. My desire for privacy shouldn't be a reason to "Minority Report" me. By the way, I know you didn't say otherwise - I'm just pointing out how bad the status quo can be.
- acdha 5y ago
  Oh, I agree — the part of me which grew up reading the CYPHERPUNKS-L list wants this to work but one of the big things I've learned is how all of the fun cryptography is just a tiny part of a social system.