If A writes a check to 'cash', pays B with it, and B passes it on to C, and so forth, are you saying that this is or will one day be illegal? An individual note and its transfers are unlikely to be made illegal. But that's not the whole story. A company engaged in the business of issuing such notes and not recording (perhaps, a fortiori, by not being able to record) the transactions among people for these instruments, however, could be ruled to be performing a separate activity which could then be made illegal. Just because a single act is legal doesn't mean that a bunch of the same acts are. For example, not reporting a $5000 cash transfer is legal, but not reporting half a dozen of them made to the same person in the same day almost certainly is. Eric