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Physical currency is going away in our lifetimes. What it is replaced by (digital cash owned by governments, corporate scrip, independent decentralised currenci

Physical currency is going away in our lifetimes. What it is replaced by (digital cash owned by governments, corporate scrip, independent decentralised currencies) is up for debate, but its demise is not. Physical currency is controlled by governments, since it is expensive to produce and distribute, and network-connected payments are becoming more and more prevalent, it is inevitable that at some point the cost benefit ratio becomes untenable for governments and they remove this option. If you fight for its existence against the government which claims sole jurisdiction over it in the first place, you're fighting yesterday's war, and doomed to lose, better instead to imagine a different future based on digital currencies (of whatever stripe). I'm not keen on bitcoin et al, but the future is clearly not in physical tokens which represent fixed denominations of currency. If you were starting a currency today, would you start with cash?

ddebernardy 9y ago
Cash is the only way to keep one's spending private. (Anything else involves some kind of ID which, even if anonymous, can be traced back to you eventually.)
- jerkstate 9y ago
  well, there's also Monero
stronglikedan 9y ago
> Physical currency is going away in our lifetimes. I don't think so. There are plenty of people that like to hoard their physical currency. There are plenty of people that don't trust "digital" currency (or other people having control of their money). I think it will be many decades before physical currency goes away - if it ever does.
- grey-area 9y ago
  Decades is within our lifetime for most of us, this change is accelerating quicker in some countries than others (I suspect the US is behind in this respect). Some countries in Europe are actively considering phasing out cash in the decades to come. Hoarding physical currency for a sense of control is misguided; someone else controls the value of that physical money too, and there is a policy of inflation. It really is no different to digital currency in terms of control over value. Buy gold or land if you want to hoard (which each have their own problems), and use barter if you want to escape detection.

ddebernardy 9y ago

Cash is the only way to keep one's spending private. (Anything else involves some kind of ID which, even if anonymous, can be traced back to you eventually.)

jerkstate 9y ago
well, there's also Monero

stronglikedan 9y ago

> Physical currency is going away in our lifetimes. I don't think so. There are plenty of people that like to hoard their physical currency. There are plenty of people that don't trust "digital" currency (or other people having control of their money). I think it will be many decades before physical currency goes away - if it ever does.

grey-area 9y ago
Decades is within our lifetime for most of us, this change is accelerating quicker in some countries than others (I suspect the US is behind in this respect). Some countries in Europe are actively considering phasing out cash in the decades to come. Hoarding physical currency for a sense of control is misguided; someone else controls the value of that physical money too, and there is a policy of inflation. It really is no different to digital currency in terms of control over value. Buy gold or land if you want to hoard (which each have their own problems), and use barter if you want to escape detection.