Whenever someone introduces new restrictions to freedoms, there is always someone who says, 'relax, it will affect only few people'. Rinse and repeat, and this way, piece by piece, all your freedoms will be taken away.
Remember: Government is not your friend. It needs to be kept in check. Financial freedoms, untraceable transactions, etc help keep government in check. Yes, it allows crime. But guess what, when government has way too much power, opposing it becomes a crime.
I agree with the sentiment in this case, and I do think 10k is ridiculously low for this restriction and the premise of this helping money laundering doesn't sound very convincing to me. But this strawman is IMO the weakest possible argument against the whole "this affects no-one" idea.
I think the more convincing points are
1) it does actually affect many people within specific groups, e.g. business owners
2) there is no alternative that comes anywhere near the features of cash, especially reliability and acceptance combined with instantaneous transfer. I think history gives enough reason to mistrust banks in times of financial crisis, and I literally cannot reliably pay for anything without a card from a bank or credit institute - or cash.
there are more points mentioned in the comments here on HN but I realized I started rambling so I'll just stop here
> Whenever someone introduces new restrictions to freedoms, there is always someone who says, 'relax, it will affect only few people'. Rinse and repeat, and this way, piece by piece, all your freedoms will be taken away.
Yes, now I don't have the freedom to drive over the speed limit. They took that away from me!
Remember: Government is not your friend. It needs to be kept in check. Financial freedoms, untraceable transactions, etc help keep government in check. Yes, it allows crime. But guess what, when government has way too much power, opposing it becomes a crime.