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posted by martyb on Thursday November 10 2016, @01:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the trade-'em-while-you-can dept.

All existing 500 and 1,000 Indian rupee banknotes will be unusable starting on November 11th, and worthless on New Year's Eve:

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that the existing 500 and 1,000 rupee banknotes will be withdrawn from the financial system overnight. The surprise move is part of a crackdown on corruption and illegal cash holdings, he said in a nationwide address on television. "Black money and corruption are the biggest obstacles in eradicating poverty," he said.

New 500 and 2,000 rupee denomination notes will be issued to replace them. The move is designed to lock out money that is unaccounted for and may have been acquired corruptly, or be being withheld from the tax authorities. It is seen as the boldest move by any Indian government to clampdown on tax evaders.

People will have until December 30th to exchange the notes at banks.


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday November 10 2016, @06:57PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday November 10 2016, @06:57PM (#425239)

    > How can I even prove the ATM receipt is for the specific bills I have?

    That's the easiest part, because the bank has a big database with the serial numbers and your transactions.
    Until you give them to you dealer or your girl's pimp, those are known as yours.

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  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Friday November 11 2016, @12:53AM

    by tftp (806) on Friday November 11 2016, @12:53AM (#425490) Homepage

    I seriously doubt that the banks know the s/n of the bills that you were ever given. Tellers most certainly do not record those. Besides, what if you were given $100 bills and exchanged them for $20's in a grocery store next door? Nobody keeps track of retail cash. But those are legitimate operations, not related to semi-criminal activities that you allude to.

    Otherwise you can earn $3K/mo, withdraw $3K/mo, and at the end of the year present $36K. This means that you never paid for housing or food, but all the money is accounted for. The government will never accept this trick. They will say that only excess above some average expenses may qualify. Naturally, that excess will be pitifully small, and for most people - negative.

    All in all, the task of proving that your cash is really yours is very difficult - especially when the other side is interested in not accepting your evidence. They hold all the cards, you hold nothing, and you have no power. You are just a beggar at their door.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday November 11 2016, @01:26AM

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday November 11 2016, @01:26AM (#425507)

      Just because tracking the serial numbers is not reliable, because they indeed can change hands a dozen times before hitting a bank again, doesn't mean that the banks don't record serial numbers at their ATMs and when cash comes in.
      It's data. Data has value because someone will figure out how to extract value out of data eventually. Storing data is cheap. Let's acquire all the data we can.

      • (Score: 1) by tftp on Friday November 11 2016, @04:37AM

        by tftp (806) on Friday November 11 2016, @04:37AM (#425566) Homepage

        I agree that it's data. However there are so many bills in circulation, and so few of them are promptly tracked, that it's infeasible _currently_ to make any use of that data. In my scenario, I got 3 $100 bills and left one at the grocery, another at the neighboring Starbucks, and another at the Walmart. What can be concluded? Those places deal with a lot of cash; in case of Starbucks, for example, those bills may not hit the bank for weeks; they will change many hands in that time, untraceably. Not all data is information - quite often more data means more garbage, more noise.

        If I were the government, I'd simply try to eliminate the cash from the society by making it *profitable* to pay with traced plastic. This is already the case with credit cards, as they pay you a small kickback out of the fees that merchants pay by adding the VISA costs to their prices. This is ridiculous, of course, but paying the same price in cash is even worse, as you pay for VISA services and do not use any of them. Merchants are prohibited from declaring VISA fees in the bill - they are required to hide them in the price. Cash discounts are allowed, but very few sellers, only in very competitive markets (4 gas stations per intersection) have to use those. The rest gladly overcharges cash customers.

        The main reason why cash is still accepted is because there are very many people in the country who only deal in cash. For one reason or another, they cannot or do not want to use banks. Anyone on social assistance, for example, fears banks, as if he gets a temporary job or any income, the bank will be happy to report it, and the person will get his assistance cut. On one hand, this is fair, on the other hand it demotivates the person, and forces him to earn extra money only in form of hard, cold, untraceable cash.

        Richer European countries are much farther on the road of eliminating cash. Cashless society, where every transaction is recorded by a private entity, is the paradise of all tracking aficionados. And it's coming, one way or another. Most likely, just by making cash too hard or expensive to use. For example, you can't pay with gold coins in a store anymore... but they still have value and can be traded in a proper setting.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @02:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @02:38AM (#425535)

      > Tellers most certainly do not record those.

      Technically true: tellers don't write them down. But the cash dispensing machines that the transaction spits the bills out from definitely do record transaction ID and serial. Tellers don't have big drawers of cash anymore because of bank robberies, they're just there to check ID/passcode/bankbook and key in the interaction.