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posted ago by RandomNumber ago by RandomNumber +100 / -0

Is Switzerland About To Become First Country To Outlaw A Cashless Society? https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/switzerland-about-become-first-country-outlaw-cashless-society

...a Swiss pressure group with libertarian leanings called the Swiss Freedom Movement (FBS) announced it had collected enough signatures (111,000) to trigger a national vote on preserving cash for posterity.

Nice! I'm somewhat leary of referenda in principle, though. After Covid revealed how many Karens exist in the general population, my trust in the common sense of the common man took a nosedive.

FBS says cash is playing a diminishing role in many economies, including Switzerland, as digital payment methods come to the fore, making it easier for the State and central bank to track citizens’ behavior. ... Forty percent of transactions were still being made using cash, which is also higher than many of Switzerland’s more cashless European neighbors, such as the UK (around 15%), Sweden (less than 10%) and Norway (3-4%, the lowest level of cash usage in the world). But that was down from around 70% three years earlier. What’s more, in terms of transaction value, the debit card recently overtook cash as the payment method with the highest share for non-recurring payments.

So, a key way for us frogs to put the brakes on is for us to keep using cash, as much as possible.

In 2019, a blog post on the IMF’s website, titled “Cashing In: How to Make Negative Interest Rates Work,” based on an IMF staff study, posited setting a dual currency system in which cash would gradually depreciate against e-money, thus allowing the central bank to set “as negative an interest as necessary for countering a recession, without triggering any large-scale substitutions into cash.”

Been hearing talks of "negative interest rates" for awhile now. Massive inflation is another way to erode cash, even when stored in your mattress.