This chapter deals with the relationship between digital monies and basic societal values such as privacy and individual freedom. Threats to privacy and related concerns have risen in the digital age. Information technologies allow companies and governments to collect, store, maintain, and disseminate information on all dimensions of individual and collective life. Privacy is a basic human need defended by legislations and constitutions worldwide. Privacy helps explaining the attractiveness of cash. Some of today’s commercial applications of information technology imply intrusions into the personal sphere. Societal concerns about anonymity, because it facilitates unlawful and criminal activity, must also be taken into consideration, but there are reasons why some privacy of monetary transactions should be preserved, and cash is uniquely suited for that. Another question concerns freedom to choose the money. This idea was proposed originally by the so-called Austrian school of thought. Followers of the school of thought associated with Friedrich von Hayek argued that currencies should compete with one another. That school however underestimated important objections; first and foremost is the collective interest ingredient of a well-functioning money, which makes private competition ill-suited as means for promoting good monies. The chapter concludes explaining why some of these objections apply to crypto assets as well.