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 post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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This is a bad thing unless the digital currency is also privacy preserving.
In China? No way.
WeChat or Alipay
A bad thing, then.
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
In Brazil, people use pix (online governmental instant payment) to pay for drugs, so i guess in China people use wechat and alipay too. It is not like the government watches every transaction made.
Edit: Also, the volume is HUGE, in Brazil we have at least 2k payments per second made with pix, in China it should be even bigger, so if there isn't an investigation, i think the government won't look at specific payments, like a guy paying for prostitution.
The government may not actively monitor transactions realtime, but it can sure as hell arrest a drug dealer or a sex worker and then go after everyone that has paid them money.
That's the thing about data collection: It may not be scary now, but it might be eventually. Who knows how a future government can abuse years of data (or data thieves for that matter)?
Give money transaction/banking data to anyone like you said and this will become a huge crime problem. Money is a huge risk for any information to be given, I bet it's like this all around the world. "But the cops", the cops of today can steal based on that information or commit other financial crimes.
You can't trust almost anyone with any financial data, not because of privacy, but because it can cause a very large problem, not human rights problem, but destabilizing country economy problem. Have you ever seen people getting jailed at your job? I have seen in mine.
I think it also comes down to the fact most people aren't going to label the transaction "illegal drugs". But it does make it easier to track payments and build cases against people (or oppress people depending on the government/police).
I agree, in an investigation with evidence, with authorization from the police force money laundering/financial crimes department and a judge saying that the bank should give the data, it would give more concrete evidence for a case.
If you live in an authoritarian system, it's not just the government you're worried about.
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.
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
It's free in Brazil.
Yeah, instant payment is amazing!
Cash is instant. It leaves their hand and goes into mine.