Quote from: tinus42 on September 20, 2013, 07:22:02 PM

Quote from: BitAddict on September 20, 2013, 02:15:26 AM

Quote from: tinus42 on September 17, 2013, 11:34:14 AM

Eventually they are going to outright abolish cash. Make everything electronic and traceable by TPTB.

Sweden is poised to become the first cashless country:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-10/era-of-paper-money-dies-out-in-sweden-as-virtual-cash-takes-over.html

They don't know that bitcoin will be the new "cash" Wink

I bet that when Sweden becomes totally "cashless" Bitcoin will become very popular there. It is an illusion that you can get rid of the black market by making paper money obsolete.

You definitely got THAT right!

There was word some time ago that some drug dealers in some parts of the USA had started taking Tide as payment for drugs. (Yes, Tide the LAUNDRY DETERGENT!). And some drug addicts have been stealing it in somewhat large and even small quantities in order to pay said drug dealers. It's gotten so bad until many of the pharmacies that sell it have had to remove the detergent from the shelves and place it under lock and key to prevent it from being stolen.

Why does this work for the dealers?

In their environment, Tide is a very popular product. It's not on anybody's "anti-list" like large sums of US or other currency, and it's easy to move by either selling for cash to working single moms or by just trading the cash for something else. Plus, depending on the drugs in question, they can just get the single moms to bring them certain medicines that are used as an ingredient in making crystal meth that has purchase restrictions instead of cash. By having a large pool of people purchasing their ingredient that is restricted for trading for the detergent, they kill two birds with one stone while avoiding the whole "what to do with the cash" scenario. Most of the people who would steal the Tide from a drug dealer are probably known to the drug dealers already, plus the bottles are big/heavy enough that getting away with a high value of it is kind of hard due to its size and weight.

When I first heard about it I couldn't help but laugh. But maybe they're onto something . . . and maybe we all need to start looking into popular things that can be traded really easily. Perhaps it's time to start stocking up on popular but expensive wines and liquors not to consume but to be used as a form of payment.

People keep coming up with more and more interesting and amusing methods of money laundering, but this thing with the detergent takes the cake, LOL.

But there's also a downside to Bitcoin taking over when Sweden becomes "cashless".

TPTB can say that Bitcoin is not used for anything except avoiding taxes or tracking and then ban it, claiming it's only used for illegal dealings.