A Chinese guy is here. Last Friday, I was buying snacks at a convenience store near my office. When I was checking out, a lady in front of me paid with cash, and the cashier helplessly told her that she couldn’t provide change, showing her the empty cash drawer. The lady couldn’t make her purchase and left disappointed.
This is a bad thing unless the digital currency is also privacy preserving.
WeChat or Alipay
A bad thing, then.
In China? No way.
It’s just WeChat. It’s basically like Venmo. It’s been that way for awhile. Even rural farmer’s markets and street vendors and stuff took WeChat last time I went and that was 7 or so years ago. It’s not a digital currency.
It should be noted that WeChat is very much more expansive in China than in the West where it’s just a chat app. An American friend lived there for awhile for work reasons so I’d go visit her. My WeChat was just a chat app and hers was the “everything app” Elon Musk dreams of making X into. (Which I seriously doubt will work in America because we have different apps that do all that. China didn’t and WeChat filled the void.)
How do people pay for illegal things like drugs, prostitution and so on?
Crypto I guess
Removed by mod
With chickens.
Bitcoin
But you’d have to get from an exchange right? Wouldn’t they be able to track their movement of tokens to specific wallets (i.e. exchange wallet to cold wallet)?
I mean, yeah, it’s a fucking totalitarian dystopia.
In China, coins and banknotes have all but disappeared
Wouldn’t that mean they’re far more used than ever instead?
It would not. The phrase means they have done almost all the disappearing except for the very last, small portion of disappearing that remains.
It’s funny, while I know what the expression means, I still always think it should mean what the comment you responded to said. As in “They’ve gone through everything, but have not disappeared.”
Right. They’ve registered 99 disappearing units, which are called nerbals, and have one remaining. So all 99 nerbals have been triggered, BUT the one that’s left.
I deduce that the one nerbal has now become a priceless commodity since the last person using currency now has cornered the nerbal market.
Y’all, I found the capitalist! Over here! Get ‘em!!
Interesting that the very similar “… have anything but disappeared” would mean they have very much not disappeared.
I haven’t used cash in years. It is happening here too and I don’t see it as a bad thing.
I don’t see it as a bad thing
That’s a bold statement to make when so called “free” and “democratic” nations are taking the left lane towards authoritarianism, doing a mass grab of medical data and are attacking encrypted communication on a weekly basis.
I hate all the fees involved
