Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, announces on TV in a speech on Nov. 8 that all 500 and 1000 rupee notes are to be declared non legal tender
This marks one of the largest and most significant moves in the war on cash by any government in the world.
This resulted in very long lines outside banks and ATM's as millions of Indians try to get their hands on legal tender. The knock on effects of this move is that much of the low income earners have seen their incomes drop drastically as the supply of legal tender cash takes a shock from this bold move.
But this isn't just happening in India
Governments have grown more and more sensitive to cash transactions because of their private nature and how easily it allows tax evasion. Governments all over the world have offered many alternative reasons why they must control the supply of cash, for instance, prohibiting the funding of terrorists, tax evasion, money laundering and other criminal activities that rely largely on cash transactions such as Drug trafficking.
In reality, it is a convenient exercise to allow governments to keep tabs on the public and make sure they can milk every last drop of money from their citizens.
China Enter's the fray
Almost echo'ing Modi's demonetization program in India, Zhou Xiaochuan published a recruitment drive to hire blockchain experts in it's own effort to develop digital currency. Although the central bank has not declared explicitly that their currency will use Blockchain technology, they have largely acknowledged the benefits of deploying a currency that uses "a series of digital ledgers that can be reconciled efficiently" which is generally accepted to be what Blockchain technology is.
In China, for smaller transactions, most people will use WeChat Pay, AliPay or ZhiFuBao. These are all fast and managed through various applications on their phone. Even taxi drivers and rickshaw drivers accept payment through these mobile services. Although, I believe that both digital currency and cash will co-exist for quite some time, it is clear that the world is headed towards a cash-less society.
The Scamper to Commodities and Bitcoin
I'm not too sure the narrative of capital flight in China and demonetisation of India has anything to do with Bitcoin and it's price appreciation.
As a person living and interacting with people in China, those requiring capital outflow through cross-border remittance have not turned to Bitcoin as that solution.
When I think about the situation in India, it also makes little sense that some 97% of the people who are not paying tax and hoarding (now illegal tender) are turning to Bitcoin in the troves. I don't think that's really what's happening.
One thing is for sure, the war on cash is real, and it's mostly a tool to grant governments more power over your privacy (or therein lack of) thus taking away more civil liberty in the name of denying resources to illicit groups of people such as terrorists (Yet they are happy pumping tens of billions of dollars into Terrorism Central - Iran).
Digitizing money means it's easier for the government to see what people are doing, and it also makes it much easier to control activities they don't like, such as purchasing cigarettes, alcohol, "salt, sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs".
This is a famous clip from the TV Show Mr Robot referencing Bitcoin. I think it's quite indicative of the legitimate concerns governments have with Bitcoin, although on a much smaller scale than what is portrayed in this TV Show.
Sometimes, convenience is gift wrapped so well that most people forget that they are giving up their civil liberties as well as privacy when accepting usage of the service. As we have seen with currencies such as Ethereum, Currencies built with Blockchain technology are not immune to top down control. With Governments such as the Chinese one looking to potentially issue their own digital currency built with Blockchain technology, make no mistake, the government will retain control of even more aspects of your money than ever before.
How will you deal with the war on cash?
Sources:
http://qz.com/838589/chinas-central-bank-is-hiring-blockchain-experts-to-help-it-kill-off-cash
http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/18/news/india/india-cash-ban-explainer
http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2016/03/01/the-great-cash-grab/#2039e5976dc4
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/war-cash-nuclear-citibank/
war on cash is endgame
Game over for a lot of people too. As we're seeing in India already..
༼✿ @sweetsssj
Game over for governments, ultimately, as their desperation to maintain the status — as in statist — quo becomes so obvious that the masses — empowered by the every-increasing ease of "going crypto" — opt out of government control with anonymous impunity.
I was just reading about the Swiss considering a completely digital currency. I don't like it one bit. I feel strange using anything but cash to buy weed.
So what would the invoice say, $xx.xx debited for "The good stuff" ? :)
༼✿ @sweetsssj
Resteemed
Thanks!
really all we need to survive and thrive is land - if one owns / uses land, one can set up off the grid electricity, grow permaculture gardens, barter and trade for goods, and use social media sites like steemit as a way to spread awareness, earn money and connect with people. I think we need to take a big step back and look at how we can live without money. obviously the tyrany of police who are controlled by governments are the only real threat (as well as all other military vehicles) but I believe alot of people working inside the system are waking up. what needs to happen is people need to band together and form communities that are 100% self suffiecient. it will be important in the future that these communities can be movable or something in case of invasion. I think if we set up hundreds of communities across the united states ( eventually the world - as the need comes) then what can happen is if one community is invaded / raided by police the members can move into another community that would welcome them with open arms (because were all human) I think we need to start looking into the decentralization of a nation, starting with communities. The way i see it this is the only option and we will evolve to this point.
If you want to expand your perspective on this, I invite you to read the following articles I have written about community
communities within cities
The importance of soverign communities
Creating noahs arc
Seperation vs community (last one is from my wordpress blog)
Thank you for this , I'll have a good read through these posts!
I can say the war on cash seems to have begun in Chile also. I will post on that later. Thanks for sharing this
I live in Brazil, what they are doing in Chile?
They're working very hard for every citizen to have a bank account and a debit card. It's a huge campaign. I will post more of the details on this later
There is the same in my country.
They did it in Brazil few years ago and actually mail agencies and lottery ticket shops become a place to pay bills using basic income cards.
I'll be very interested to see the situation in Chile from your point of view!
I will post on this at some point soon. At the moment Chile is very stable, however the push to get the population off of cash is very evident to me. I will explain more in my upcoming post. Thanks so much for commenting and your continued support.
Yeah, the war on Cash is just the beginning. The end game plan is to have all money tied into a neural interface that directly connects to the internet. I have covered all this in my novel "The Lost Truth" which came out in 2014. Also this evidence just keeps piling up.
The World Economic Forum on the DNI and the future of the internet...
That's an interesting scenario, I'd be interested to read your book actually, can I buy it from Amazon? I'm not sure which one it is..
Yeah for sure. You should also check out some of my other youtube work, I have some viral videos, especially one on PizzaGate that could use more awareness brought to it. Just be warned, this is a very scary and disturbing look into the politicians that run America.
Here is a link to my book => https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Truth-Dean-Fougere/dp/1502511835
Here is a link to my video discussing my book if you are interested.
Also I give away free .pdf copies because I wrote the book to wake people up not make money. If you are interested in a free copy just email me: [email protected]
I think we all need to be vigilant of this sort of thing. I hardly ever use cash anymore and I suppose the convenience of it has really worked on me. I think we need to be wary of control and suspicious of government controlled blockchain projects. Whilst blockchains CAN give better privacy and anonymity that is not always the case. Even without top down control being expressed overtly there can be backdoors built into anything that is financed or created by the government. They just can't help themselves. Whilst I am mining ZCash I am also acutely aware that it has involvement from various security agencies - I do not consider it an entirely secure platform.
I think a lot of the jargon and key words have to be understood in context, and not just assumed to mean one thing. For instance, lots of assumptions are made about crypto currencies, blockchain, decentralisation, immutability, non-repudiation, security and many more. I am beginning to operate almost entirely cashless, surprisingly out of my own choice and convenience, foregoing privacy on what these transactions are actually for.
༼✿ @sweetsssj
Very true.
Yes and as with many things convenience is very seductive. That's how they get you:) It's the same principle that Google/Facebook etc have used to take all our information.
The scary thing is that people are happy to give all sorts of information away for free. Society has been conditioned to basically not care about privacy anymore.
Of course, there are yet to be many negative consequences in having so much personal data online, but I'm sure a time will come when people realise it's not a good idea. By then it will be too late.
Isn't that always the case. The most frightening thing is the younger kids these days don't even understand what privacy is.
Always.
Ooo I love Mr. Robot!
It was a little slow at the beginning of the second season, but I felt that it really picked up from the middle all the way to the end. The writers are clearly bitcoin and crypto savvy. Very interested to see what more they write about in the future..
༼✿ @sweetsssj
I had asked an Indi friend of mine. (following could be wrong) He said that Pakistan has a printing press that has been counterfeiting the currency and dumping in Cashmere, so India has been working on this exchange program in secret for months. Also, I hear that Cashmere is heating up. I understand the situation to be more dangerous than is being discussed in media.
BTW....1000 rupee is only about $15 USD. This is huge scale operation.
I'm not sure what you mean , are you saying Pakistan are counterfeiting the new rupee? Or what? Dumping what into cashmere?
Cash and war are illusions. But the consequences...
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Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
for more on China's central bank and blockchain, see here
https://cointelegraph.com/news/chinas-central-bank-hires-blockchain-experts-to-launch-cryptocurrency
cashless is a serious measure against freedom, they want us as hostages of finance system. u.u
There has been report that Bitcoin is attribute to what Modi done recently.
Interestingly, Ali Baba is also in the payment industry now from what I learn.
OK, even some shops in Chinatown in Singapore accept AliPay. That's something. :-)
Personally, I believe that the price action of Bitcoin has little to do with the narrative of demonetisation in India. As I mentioned in my article, it's going to be difficult to justify capital flight to bitcoin or other commodities when most of your assets are in non legal tender.
Probably. Now, USD has appreciated and also affect people's spending in Singapore.
http://www.todayonline.com/business/singapore-shoppers-check-spending-us-sites-after-spike-dollar
The issue is genuine and needed genuine attention and action like this. Really a revolutionary step taken by government of India.
I use only cash and crypto. Very rarely cards. But I don't know how long it can last.
Are you concerned about your privacy or have any reason to obscure what you're doing with your money? Or is it the principle of having a layer of privacy that appeals to you more?
Yes, but not so much
Conversely - how i earn my money(I earn only crypto).
Funfact - in our country, who do not pay taxes should pay tax for it eg unemployed.
But I have an official earning, I lease my apartment (this money is given to the parents). So I hope it will not affect me.
PS. I hope you are not from the tax police ^^
Interesting, no I'm not from tax police. I don't really know how that works, you're saying that you must pay an unemployment tax?
Yeap, if I didn't pay any taxes last 6 months eg income tax or any other tax.
But the law is very crude, operates less than a year. The Government expects that by its action gets about 500 thousand people. But in practice, it turned out in the area of 50 thousand people.
Definitely this is good decision from Prime minister.
This will help for economic developing in india.
Great info but I do hope that means if you have money in that denomination you wont lose it as read that a young Indian lady had committed suicide as she thought she had lost everything. Only hope that isn't the case
You are entitled to exchange the old notes for the new ones. But there are limits and over a certain limit you are liable to be investigated as well as pay the tax owed + a fine of roughly the same amount.
Thanks
Thanks for reporting on this. I really enjoyed the post, it's really well written on the subject! I'm not sure if I'm too ballsy or what, but my assets are pretty much half in cryptos now. I think with the government like land registries, citizen registries etc, there's no way it would be based on public blockchain. They would be based on private / consortium blockchains.. which is well when you think about it, its kinda ironic :)
I guess you've made your move in anticipation of the potential deterioration effects the war on cash could have on "developed economies" and no surprise that cryptos is half the answer. I still don't understand the point of private chains, it sounds not much different than a distributed database maintained by the issuing institution and their friends..
Yup.. that's government ;)
Private / consortium so they can change the details whenever, without needing a 51% consensus..
Nice and Informative post! Followed and upvoted!
I am new on Steemit do visit my first post and follow me @perfectionist :)
Thanks, welcome to steemit , looking forward to your contributions!
The WAR ON CASH is
AROUND THE GLOBE !!!
Wake up !!!
Or it is going to be too late !
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Just watched this after reading the post It seems India isn't the only place just the one with the most unstable governments. Currently I'm at a bit of a loss it's not affecting me or anywhere close , I'm in the Europe we have our own problems I guess , but going without cash would be devastating in my mind. I'm not a fan of money , but currently that is the thing which works. It's a shame It has gone to such lengths to become a such a sham I mean there are people that cant hammer a nail and they make thousands or even more , literally typing numbers. Money has almost lost all value being backed by nothing and in some places copied to infinity(like in America with their trillions of stimulus packages). I can't even fathom how you could run a government with a deficit , truly unreal. Currently I don't see a good way to change currencies (cash to crypto) and in some ways I'm against crypto I wouldn't want any part of me relying on electronic banking we don't need to make phones our life servers where we live within.
It's really saddening to see how the world changed for the past 20 years and looking back even 100 years there were so much mistakes made , so much destroyed and lost . Almost everywhere Agriculture and Industrial development has been lost , I'm a strong proponent for a decentralized governments as much as possible with local Industries and developed rural areas rather than having China as the world's Factory , America as the Bank , that just reeks of the Roman Empire and their Centralized power and government policies that turned half of Europe into a flat land so people can get drunk and play their little games of politics.
Anyway I have to say I completely agree with @coloured-content and would love to read through the materials linked there.
Sorry for ranting I got a bit off track. My point was we need cash and we need to stop drugging ourselves with money. We need to fix our Economies and make them actually ECONOMICAL rather than CONSUMER based. It's ridiculous I saw a Ford Pickup today , banged up almost everywhere it looked like it had made it through a lot , but it looked good.
Next to it there were a SUV BMW and another glossy car costing probably 30 times as much , with all the added benefits of computer boards , cooling and whatever more , but it has no use other than to go to town with it and as a car it won't survive for fifty years , or let you maintain it , you cant change the parts on your own , they cost astronomically more compared to older vehicles that were simple as fuck , compared to the new ones.
So going back to my point I would rather live in a sane normal stable world rather than one controlled by corrupt corporations and politicians serving nobody , where everything is controlled and nothing goes by unnoticed. I think we live in a wonderful planet with wonderful people around and we should strive to give the best we can , the quality of everything seems to be going down for the outside looks , people are loosing their minds on pointless bullshit , spending their time looking at empty screens most of the time , forgetting that life is not a game it's a dance and you can't dance where there is no music and with all the bullshit we put ourselves with we forget how to hear and what to listen to.