Or launder them by asking for big bills from the bank

Indeed it is wise to draw the biggest banknotes possible to reduce the tracking extent.

Note there is a trend of ATMs in recent years dispensing smaller max denominations. In Netherlands and France there are no longer ATMs that dispense banknotes bigger than €50. This is likely a move to increase surveillance without people realising.

That way you don’t have to believe the joke that data can’t be held more than 6 months.

Drawing big notes is orthoganol to the staleness of the data. You can do both. Draw big notes and also make the data stale.

It’s also not about data retention. It’s about data relevance. The more stale the data is, the less likely the source and destination are transacted by the same person. If you pull cash from the wall and that some day buy fertilizer with it, there is greater confidence that the same person is in both transactions than if there are months between the two transactions.

There isn't a word to describe the amount of data that's stored. That's why they NEED AI to work and are ok dumping huge amounts of money into it.

Really feel like its time we shifted currencies up a bit tbh.

So UK currently is £50 (almost non existent) £20 £10 and £5 notes, £2 £1 50p 20p 10p 5p 2p 1p coins.

Drop the 1/2p coins and £5/10 note, add a £5/10 coin and actually print the £50 notes in meaningful quantities, probably add a £100 note too.

Indeed coins are great for privacy. Too bad ATMs don’t dispense them.

(update) correction.. some do.

I just use my debit card. That way there's no cash to track!

I don’t know if banks generally scan inbound cash that’s deposited over the counter. But if the farm supply store subscribes to a armored car security service to pickup the cash, then the security service would scan the serial numbers and enter the farm supply store as the source.

The evidence would not be strong enough to make an arrest but targetting you for extra surveillance seems likely enough IMO.