If cash was invented today it would be illegal. It's grandfathered in for now, but new cash-like instruments aren't going to get the same treatment.

(Also, cryptocurrency is more powerful and thus more dangerous than cash because it can be transmitted electronically and it has no volume or mass. These differences are relevant if you consider that organized crime incurs nontrivial costs in handling large amounts of cash.)

this is obviously nonsense. you are confusing transactions, versus operating money services businesses. Cash is perfectly legal and so is any cash like instrument. It's when you start operating a business that is involved in money transmission, cash or not, that you need to register.

> Cash is perfectly legal and so is any cash like instrument

See what happened to bearer bonds.

Stablecoins are inherently doomed. First, they’re trying to solve the impossible trinity. And second, their untraceabiliry and explicit hard currency link makes them non-compliant AML-wise.

Even if you can make an AML compliant stablecoin, you're going to wind up with low marketshare as you have no competitive edge against over both actual banking and the cryptocurrencies getting used for money laundering. Like, by the time you centralize operations enough to comply with AML laws, you want to be using a database and an API with access tokens and resource identifiers that you hand out to approved participants. At which point you're a fancy bank, pretty much.

If cash gets the axe, these systems will be even more in demand, and the best thing is that they are open source software. Hopefully for those that live in a country where they still can enjoy their democratic freedoms and retain the right to some privacy.

I have indeed described cash. If you are in a set of businesses that includes banks, credit unions, currency exchangers, pawnbrokers, insurance companies, car dealerships, or any other business designated by the Secretary of the Treasury that has cash transactions with a high degree of usefulness in criminal matters, your use of cash is highly regulated. You are legally required to file reports with the Secretary of the Treasury (or their designee) whenever you make certain transactions. Failure to do so is a crime with a $250,000 fine and a five-year jail term. This is doubled if it is part of a pattern of illegal activity involving $100k or more.

Sure, businesses that use stable-coins with "high degree of usefulness in criminal matters" can register and file reports who whoever they need to, just like their cash counterparts - I don't see a problem with that.

My main gripe with today's electronic transactions is that they are not private and too much information is shared between people who I don't know and don't need to know (banks, marketers, hackers). The government doesn't need to know that I bought a car brand y for x, they just need to know that the funds were clean, the bank doesn't need to know any of this info, just that the funds are clean, how much, the 'to' and 'from', that's all. So there's a lot of room for improvement in the existing system.

In the future, crypto-currency stable-coins will offer both privacy and also the ability to prove that the funds are clean, without exposing private details, maybe using things like zero-knowledge proofs.

>The government doesn't need to know that I bought a car brand y for x

What, you're making no sense, the government absolutely needs to know the make, model, and purchase price of any vehicle you buy. This is a standard part of various title and registration forms.

>Sure, businesses that use stable-coins with "high degree of usefulness in criminal matters" can register and file reports who whoever they need to, just like their cash counterparts - I don't see a problem with that.

One of these reports is a written plan that documents the efforts you're going through to prevent money laundering. If this plan isn't good enough, surprise, you get shut down.

You didn't understand me. Yes, the info is demanded by the government (or whatever authority), the purpose is to ensure that the funds were clean & that the car complies with whatever regulation. What I'm saying is that there is technology available to both prove that the funds are clean and regulations are met without revealing the details that should only be between the buyer and seller.