Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a peculiar war on cash has emerged, including news of a coin shortage that never quite made sense, which has some individuals thinking that the crisis is being exploited to usher in the “cashless society.”

The fake news media on cue has jumped into action to call anyone who expresses this notion a “conspiracy theorist.”

“Coins aren’t being circulated because businesses are closed and sales are down during the pandemic. And the government isn’t pushing the U.S. into a cashless society, either,” the Associated Press declared.

“We rate the claim that a “cashless” society would have zero cash, meaning money would be fully digital, fully traceable and fully controlled PARTLY FALSE as some of the claim was not supported by our research,” the USA Today wrote in their supposed fact check about the cashless society.

However, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Wall Street banking elites openly bragged about how they pined for a cashless society.

“We want a cashless society,” said Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan last year at Fortune’s Brainstorm Finance conference, explaining that the financial system is “already digitized” and the cashless society is right around the corner.

“The business has moved digitally and it will continue to move that way. It’s just figuring out how to add the value,” he added.

JP Morgan also released a white paper celebrating how Europe is rapidly going cashless, calling the trend a natural progression from paper-based monetary units.

“PayPal and Apple’s publicly reported growth rates suggest that both could potentially be gaining consumer preference and merchant adoption. Digital Wallets directly address consumer security and help push toward a true cashless society,” said Brian Gaynor, Executive Director, Head of Product and Strategy Solutions at J.P. Morgan Merchant Services in Europe.

“For example, PayPal holds my card data centrally and keeps me from having to trust multiple e-commerce sites or apps with my full primary account number. Apple Pay does the same,” he added.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the red menace is leading the way toward a cashless society. China has led the way on smart cities, social credit scores, weaponizing search engines to be tracking devices, and various devious technological innovations meant to crush the spirit of its citizenry.

China’s aggressive moves toward cashlessness are already causing problems for tourists and native citizens alike with society punishing those who resist the transition, as the Wall Street Journal has explained:

Travelers have had more luck on Alipay, which introduced a seven-step process last week that requires visitors to submit passport and visa information to Alipay, before loading money using an overseas card onto a prepaid card.

In a bathroom near the Great Wall recently, Catherine De Witte, a Belgian marketing consultant, was getting frustrated. She waved her hands in front of a high-tech toilet-paper dispenser, jammed her fingers into the slot and finally pounded on the machine. She wasn’t amused when she saw the QR code.

“You really need the restroom, and the restroom only gives you toilet paper if you can do something strange with your phone,” she fumed.

Once the cashless society is achieved, the ubiquitous tracking of every commercial transaction will become possible. The mark-of-the-beast microchips may not even be necessary at that point to achieve total centralized control. This is why China, globalist banking interests and the Washington D.C. swamp are pushing this notion, and the COVID-19 pandemic is the crisis they are using to accelerate this sinister agenda against economic freedom.