I’ve been anticipating this for decades. Governments can barely wait, because it finally gives them total control at the finest possible level over everyone and everything. The advantages to the banks of course are equally obvious: they become indispensable crossroads for total economic control.
Oh,and remember, when cash is outlawed, only outlaws will have cash. Thus, in my fantasies, I’ve always pictured the new outlaw cash as being small-denomination gold coins minted in the Caribbean and that they would have the images of famous Mafia heads on their obverses: the higher the denomination, the more important and powerful the historical Mafia head. (I haven’t figured out whether Don Corleone or Tony Soprano would count since they’re fictional, and besides, Tony was head of the lowly New Jersey mob anyway, so he’d be lucky to make it on the dime.)
At any rate, I’ve wondered whether bartering would be outlawed too, you know, as part of the all-digital-money plutocracy. If so, then we digital peasants wouldn’t even be allowed to engage in practices such as chicken trading, practices utilized by our less-than-digital ancestor peasants from time immemorial.
The gov’t hates bartering as it is too easy to avoid taxes.