> In his home country, you couldn't trust the banks, so people hid their money. Of course that kind of thinking is silly in Australia If I had to choose betwee

> In his home country, you couldn't trust the banks, so people hid their money. Of course that kind of thinking is silly in Australia If I had to choose between the two positions, one of implicit trust and another of implicit mistrust towards banks, I would consider the latter choice to be the saner and safer one. The push for no cash is real, and it’s becoming more real with every constriction of cash transactions and with every CBDC trial. As the BIS chairman said, the goal is total knowledge of every financial transaction. Fanfares about financial inclusiveness seem to me little more than marketing quips, the actual goal being zero financial privacy. Now, one may wonder, why would a law-abiding citizen require any modicum of privacy - have they anything to hide? After all, “transparency” is a nice notion, right? I think the answer is that privacy is a fundamental right, something that all the scaremongering about criminal enterprises is used to corrode. Not to mention that “transparency for thee but not for me” isn’t real transparency.