I was refering to an idea, not mine, of no exchange. No taxes, no money no crypto... Doing things not because you get something out of it but because you want to. You wouldn't have trafficking, mafia... Prostitution is so 2010.. now we have onlyfans. There will be crime because someone will hit his wife, or cheat and get killed... Then you have lots mentally disturbed individuals, regardless of money.
I see you've got the scams figured out and I'm sure there are many other ways of transferring illicit money from A to B. But cashless means every form of payment will be traced and, when needed by law enforcement, can be forensically analysed to the penny. The cat and mouse game will be in front of a PC. But for a great majority of the population, it will be more difficult on the grey market to avoid the transactional and income taxes. Sure, today you can Venmo someone directly for the plumbing job they did at your place, no invoice no tax. But it won't be long until your bank is required to provide authorities a list of all your transactions for the last number of years, run some AI algo to tie your 1040s to it, then send you an IRS letter with attached fine for discrepancies that you will have to refute through a lengthy process. Today, all transactions of 10k or more are flagged, as well as multiple transactions amounting to 10k or more to a same destination done within hours or days of each other. The systems are in place.
Some of what you are describing in your post is already happening. Payment services like Paypal, Venmo and Cashapp now have to issue Form 1099-K when the total amount received in one year is over a certain threshold. One problem is that there is no easy, standardized way to distinguish between payments that are not taxable income (e.g., parent sending money to their kid, reimbursement for my half of the restaurant bill that you paid, etc.) and payments that are for goods or services. So the system isn't perfect, and never will be, and not everything is traceable yet. But I agree that as a society, we are moving in that direction. But the original post asserted in very vague terms that most crime would become impossible in a cashless society, e.g., that without cash or crypto, there would be no way to pay for drugs or sex. I don't think that's going to happen in my lifetime LOL. People will find a way to pay for that stuff. It may become much harder to avoid tax on those transactions, and they will be disguised as something else. But crime is not going to disappear just because cash disappears. There are sex workers who report their income on their tax return right now LOL. They don't fill out a Schedule C with the words sex worker. They put down something else: consultant, massage therapist, housekeeper, adult entertainment, whatever. Some of them want to pay into the social security system so they can collect social security benefits when they reach retirement age. Some of them want to show the income so they can get a mortgage or a car loan.
Yes, totally agree, crime has a way of finding the leaks it needs to prosper. Governments don't move quickly and covid has given a few the incentive to switch from cash to cashless. Here in Singapore businesses are incentivized not to use cash "to prevent the spread of covid". The only time I use it is to tip my Burmese hairdresser and Vietnamese masseuse who are paid a misery by the businesses that employ them.
China is a mostly a cashless society right now. Almost every transaction is paid via mobile app like Wechat or Alipay, no Visa or Mastercard. Their vending machines only accept mobile payments. If you decide to pay by cash, you better have exact change because you won't get any change back. Even beggers accepts donations via mobile apps.
The vision of a "cashless society" involving crypto gets tangled in the web of government regulation, taxation, and the tracing of assets to prevent funding of terrorism & illicit trade (drugs, etc.). This brings up the concept of moving to locales with lesser regulation and taxation (VAT, etc.) on crypto. Dubai’s New Crypto Tax Rules: Should You Relocate? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dubai-crypto-tax-rules-relocate-190000901.html
Dubai is in a middle of a resurgence bubble, with many expats from Hong Kong relocating there and in Singapore. There are also lots of Russians fleeing the draft to fight in Ukraine and Chinese looking to hide their money from the CCP.
Forgot to add.. with so much money flowing, there's an astonishing number of gorgeous creatures roaming the popular parts of town looking for a soulmate, for a day or for life.