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Weed Shops Switch to Cash After Cashless ATM Crackdown

From How to Buy Weed? That’s Changing as Cashless ATMs Close – Bloomberg:

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A Brooklyn art collective has created an ATM that lets people put their balance on display at the Art Basel in Miami Beach.

The ATM created by MSCHF puts the cash balance of those who use it on display at the art fair and ranks people by wealth. American DJ and music producer Diplo posted on Twitter a video of him taking the No. 1 spot on the ATM at $3 million on Friday.

“ATM Leaderboard is an extremely literal distillation of wealth-flaunting impulses,” said Daniel Greenberg, co-founder of MSCHF.

From An ATM at Art Basel publicly ranks its users by their bank account balance : NPR:

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Despite the high level of opportunities afforded by AI, for most it has been reduced to a much more manageable set of data manipulation activities. Microsoft’s Kate Crawford summarizes this by saying that most AI in use today is neither artificial nor intelligent”.
In practice, AI is operationalized as an application of statistical analysis tools supported by a growing set of machine learning techniques. Primarily that means mining data to improve how the organization can learn from past experiences, recognize repeating patterns to automate common tasks, and correlate different signals in that data to predict future events.

From Digital Economy Dispatch #109 — Why ChatGPT is an Important Wake-Up Call in Your Digital Transformation | Digital Economy Dispatches.

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Simon, a small business owner, meanwhile, argued that the percentage charged by card providers is lower than what the bank charges to deposit cash. He said: “There is also an extra staff cost to taking cash only, to cash up, make a float, and bank the cash.”

From Ealing man fumes as ‘more and more restaurants take cash only’ leaving West London shoppers divided – MyLondon:

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On Tuesday, Reuters reported German authorities are moving to acquire emergency cash deliveries to keep their economy running in the event power outages take down electronics-dependent methods of payment.

From Germany Amasses Cash In The Event Blackouts Take Down Payment Systems – The Daily Financial Trends:

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Since the beginning of 2022, criminals have blown up about 450 ATMs across Germany to steal cash

From Number of ATM bombings in Germany reaches new peak:

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Jonathan Owens accused Costa Coffee of racism after a barista turned down his money as he tried to pay two soft drink bottles.

The 46-year-old insisted the branch in Maidstone, Kent was “ostracising an entire country” by refusing the banknote and dscribed the attitude of staff “racist”.

From Lorry driver’s left furious after Costa Coffee worker refuses Scottish banknote – Mirror Online:

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With ‘Tikkie Zakelijk’, translated as Tikkie Business, ABN Amro offers companies a dedicated app that companies can use to create and send payment requests to their customers via WhatsApp, text message, email or a QR code and get paid quickly and easily.

While a consumer-to-consumer Tikkie payment is around €30 on average, a business Tikkie averages about €80. The upper limit for businesses has been set at €50,000.

From ABN Amro unveils Tikkie for Business:

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Decentralized exchanges, in theory, also offer more transparency to users when it comes to how they are run. They use open-source smart contracts, not proprietary software, to match buyers and sellers, and the teams that develop decentralized exchange protocols don’t control how the exchanges operate. Governance is instead left to the people who own tokens issued by the exchanges.

But decentralized platforms still make up a relatively small part of overall crypto trading. In November, they processed just under 14% of total spot trading volume and less than 2% of total derivatives trading volume,

From The DeFi Conundrum: Why Crypto Exchanges Like Uniswap Are Struggling to Reach Critical Mass — The Information:

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Patrizia Flammini’s café does brisk business selling coffee, pastries and sandwiches in the heart of Rome, with prices starting at €1.20 for an espresso.

But she said her heart sank every time a customer tried to buy small pick-me-ups using a payment card — which gives the banks a cut of the sale price. “It’s almost offensive,” she said. “I make the coffee, I wash the cups, but [the bank’s cut] is more than I earn.”

Small business owners such as Flammini may soon be spared from accepting low-value digital payments if Italy’s new rightwing coalition government has its way. In her draft budget for 2023, prime minister Giorgia Meloni has proposed giving Italian merchants the right to refuse digital payments for transactions below €60. The government also intends to raise the ceiling for legal cash transactions from €1,000 to €5,000.

From Giorgia Meloni pushes back on Italy’s shift into digital payments age | Financial Times:

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Plans by Italy’s new government to promote cash over digital payments are facing pushback from the country’s central bank over black economy and tax evasion concerns.

In its draft budget, the rightwing coalition government led by Giorgia Meloni has proposed raising the legal limit for cash transactions from €1000 to €5000 and allowing merchants to refuse digital payments of less than €60.

However, the Bank of Italy’s economic research unit chief, Fabrizio Balassone, has testified in parliament that “limitations to cash use pose a hurdle to several forms of crime and [tax] evasion.”

Merchants in Italy currently have to accept electronic payments of any value or face fines of €30 and four per cent of the transaction value.

The rule was introduced as part of Italy’s post-Covid national Recovery and Resilience Plan and linked to around €200 billion in funds from the EU.

From Italian central bank raises concerns over government’s pro-cash plans:

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At least one phone number from HSBC, Lloyds, Santander, TSB, Nationwide and Virgin Money was successfully spoofed, leaving customers of those firms potentially at risk.

From Which? claims banks are leaving customer wide open to spoofing fraud.

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