3 ms·

Cash will be dead before you know it. So will ATMs and bank tellers.

drakeandrews 13y ago
Would you care to explain why? Cash is really useful, lots of little places don't take cards and couldn't if they wanted to. As much as I despise it, the vagueries of "I owe you four fifty for lunch but all I have is a ten, so take the ten and that'll cover pizza next week." are a nice part of my social interaction with my friends. Electronic transfers (either bank account to bank account or paypal etc.) are useful for stuff >£20 but I can't see myself splitting lunch and going through the (understandably) rigorous security checks my bank enforces to pay a couple of pounds (says the guy who once wrote a cheque for a copy of the i[1] (I'd been given a cheque book by my bank and cheques are novel to me, not having been old enough for them to be anything other than that thing grandparents send you that you can swap for money)). Bank tellers are useful in that they are a human being with whom I can discuss things about my account with face-to-face, which is useful when something's gone belly-up with their systems and you need a real person who can see you're also a real person and hit the damn thing a few times until it works. Finally, I'm still going to need a proper bank account for things like credit, overdrafts, standing orders of rent and such to people who haven't moved over to bitcoin yet, not to mention paying my taxes and taking my earnings from companies that pay in pounds sterling, US dollars, euros or other traditional currencies. It only makes sense that instead of holding a mass of bitcoins, that my bank (nominally HSBC for myself) holds a much larger mass and allows me to make payments in BTC much like I would in any of the hundreds I already can. If I wanted to hold BTC myself, then I could open an account in BTC much like I could open a EUR or USD account now. [1] The i is a 20 pence newspaper by the makers of the Independent. Prior to moving to London where if you're not paying attention you can amass fifteen copies of the Evening Standard whilst walking across the river, I tended to buy a copy of the i every day going into college because it was something I could read entirely whilst eating breakfast and tended to avoid the fluff I noticed in larger papers on slow news days.
briandear 13y ago
Gold won't be dead.

Would you care to explain why? Cash is really useful, lots of little places don't take cards and couldn't if they wanted to. As much as I despise it, the vagueries of "I owe you four fifty for lunch but all I have is a ten, so take the ten and that'll cover pizza next week." are a nice part of my social interaction with my friends. Electronic transfers (either bank account to bank account or paypal etc.) are useful for stuff >£20 but I can't see myself splitting lunch and going through the (understandably) rigorous security checks my bank enforces to pay a couple of pounds (says the guy who once wrote a cheque for a copy of the i[1] (I'd been given a cheque book by my bank and cheques are novel to me, not having been old enough for them to be anything other than that thing grandparents send you that you can swap for money)). Bank tellers are useful in that they are a human being with whom I can discuss things about my account with face-to-face, which is useful when something's gone belly-up with their systems and you need a real person who can see you're also a real person and hit the damn thing a few times until it works. Finally, I'm still going to need a proper bank account for things like credit, overdrafts, standing orders of rent and such to people who haven't moved over to bitcoin yet, not to mention paying my taxes and taking my earnings from companies that pay in pounds sterling, US dollars, euros or other traditional currencies. It only makes sense that instead of holding a mass of bitcoins, that my bank (nominally HSBC for myself) holds a much larger mass and allows me to make payments in BTC much like I would in any of the hundreds I already can. If I wanted to hold BTC myself, then I could open an account in BTC much like I could open a EUR or USD account now. [1] The i is a 20 pence newspaper by the makers of the Independent. Prior to moving to London where if you're not paying attention you can amass fifteen copies of the Evening Standard whilst walking across the river, I tended to buy a copy of the i every day going into college because it was something I could read entirely whilst eating breakfast and tended to avoid the fluff I noticed in larger papers on slow news days.

briandear 13y ago

Gold won't be dead.