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Comment by clamprecht | Hacker News Reader

For me, Cash is freedom. No one can block my transaction, record what I purchase, or tell me who I can and can't give money to. I live part of the year in Argentina, and when I'm there I don't even carry a wallet. Just a pocket full of cash, maybe my bus card if I need it. I love it.

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Cash is also a liability. It makes you a target for muggings if anyone notices you have a significant wad of cash on you. If you misplace your cash, you have no recourse like if you misplaced a credit card. With cash, it's difficult to track your own transactions and budget appropriately. I live by YNAB to monitor my spending and saving habits, and it wouldn't be possible to use as effectively with cash.

Freedom has risks and responsibilities, I accept them.

Edit: BTW, I'm not saying one needs to be 100% cash. I use credit cards too. The important thing is that I have a choice.

I find this position generally attractive because I believe that good principles and ethics requires some effort on everyone's part, especially when the benefit is towards not oneself. Technically, though, I would not believe a claim that anonymous electronic currency is impossible to implement. You can have the benefits of cash and the convenience of technologies.

> You can have the benefits of cash and the convenience of technologies.

Cash is instant, does not require power, does not require connectivity, and no one takes of cut of the transaction.

Cash also leaves a trail so faint that it requires a substantial investment in resources to trace it.

I think those hurdles will be difficult to overcome in order to match the benefits of cash in an electronic currency.

> It makes you a target for muggings if anyone notices you have a significant wad of cash on you. If you misplace your cash, you have no recourse like if you misplaced a credit card.

Generally speaking, the likelihood of these things happening is pretty small, and unless you carry a huge amount of cash, the cost if they do happen is not very significant.

I've live in a country that is 99% cash based and I use YNAB with no problems whatsoever. It is not difficult to track or budget in the slightest.

Most freedom is risky.

I'd argue that having a credit card is much more risky. You don't walk around with that much money in cash.

If you are being negligent with your credit card you loose everything. If you are being negligent with cash you only loose what you have on you.

Can be mugged for credit card with the pin number beaten out of you.

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