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.)
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.
how do you pay people off-books and off-contracts? how do you pay prostitues or buy drugs? no way homeless prostitues all use monero uniswap and kyc exchanges to load up their wechat. how if not cash?
I mean, yeah, it’s a fucking totalitarian dystopia.
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.
