Three thoughts: * Asset forfeiture abuses by police have been going on for at least a generation. Here's an excerpt from House Judiciary testimony by an Africa

Three thoughts: * Asset forfeiture abuses by police have been going on for at least a generation. Here's an excerpt from House Judiciary testimony by an African American gardener who dared to carry $9K in cash in 1991 to buy plants at a nursery. He had it all (surprise!) confiscated by cops. The fact that it's been 23 years and the abuses are worse, not better, is telling. https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/statement-rep-henry-hyde-forfeiture-reform-now-or-never https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/statement-rep-he... And here's a note I sent to Politech on the topic back in 1998: http://www.politechbot.com/p-00023.html http://www.politechbot.com/p-00023.html * Contrary to some claims in this thread, there are reasons to transport significant sums of $10K+ in cash. Contractors, tree removal companies, landscape installers, grading/excavation firms, etc. can charge that much for work and, I'm told by my SF peninsula neighbors who have had work done, often offer cash discounts. (Which means, of course, both the homeowner and the contractor would be transporting large cash amounts sequentially.) * I suspect that governments would, to a first approximation, prefer that their own citizens engage only in traceable, trackable, non-anonymous electronic transactions with closely regulated financial firms. This is already happening: cash now represents only 14% of dollar payments by value. Though my favorite example in this area is this proposal that bubbled up inside the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; I wrote about it for Wired in 1999: http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/10/32121 http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/10/32121 "The magnetic strip could visibly record when a bill was last withdrawn from the banking system. A carry tax could be deducted from each bill upon deposit according to how long the bill was in circulation... Systems would have to be put in place at banks and automatic teller machines to read bills, assess the carry tax, and stamp the bills 'current...'"