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The Death of Cash

90 points by JacobAldridge 11y ago

copsarebastards 11y ago
I think the bit about cash versus bitcoin in the beginning leaves out an important detail about bitcoin: it doesn't require proximity, which can fraught with risk. In the situation of buying drugs, for example, Silk Road and its ancestors provide safety because people don't have to go to some shady house to buy their drugs. I agree that bitcoins aren't as convenient as cash, and as such I agree with the author that cash is here to stay. But bitcoins fill a niche nothing else can fill right now, and as such, bitcoins are here to stay too.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  > people don't have to go to some shady house to buy their drugs Most people don't go to shady houses, even those with very regular habits.
Fishman343 11y ago
I still only use cash everywhere it is possible to do so. Handing over a physical wad of cash or breaking into a £20 note is a mentally painful barrier that stops me spending any more than I have to. For me at least, handing over a piece of plastic and typing in a PIN doesn't carry the same weight yet.
- ck425 11y ago
  I do the same. Having to find an atm is also good at stopping me from getting money out for small spends like coffee or cake that I really don't need.
- otherusername2 11y ago
  For me it's not so much that handing over cash is mentally more painful. It's just that cash is inconvenient to obtain, so if I don't have enough of it on me, I won't buy that drink in the shop when I'm only 20 minutes from home. With plastic, there's always enough money, so I don't even have to think about it.
bsbechtel 11y ago
The discussion here is a story of what happens with every new technology replacing/disrupting an incumbent technology. Early in every new technology's lifespan, many predictions are often made that X new technology will kill Y old technology. However, what is really happening is that X new technology is replacing A, B, C, and D use cases for Y old technology. However, Y technology had use cases A, B, C, D, and E, so Y technology still has use case E and thus still exists. An example of this is the automobile. Horses are still around today and used by humans, despite the prevalence of internal combustion engines. This is something important to think about when evaluating new technologies and their value to society.
- qmalxp 11y ago
  For me, the only use case of cash is "The tiny fraction of vendors who don't accept debit." Oh, and I guess under-the-table payments.
nostromo 11y ago
Cash may not always be so anonymous. It seems plausible that banks at some point may start tracking bank notes by serial, or some other method, which would be very useful for law enforcement and the IRS. Example: Alice withdraws $100 from an ATM to buy illegal drugs from Bob, who then deposits it in his bank to pay rent. Bob is later found guilty of distributing drugs. Law enforcement could now request from his bank his deposit history, including bank note serial numbers. Repeated deposits of banknotes that were last seen from Alice could lead investigators to her door. It's the kind of big data tracking scheme that 10 years ago would be impossibly hard to do, but with today's technology wouldn't be so hard.
- joesmo 11y ago
  I don't think people will accept this. For people with other means of payment, the main function of cash is anonymous transactions. There is no other way to anonymously transfer money. The article incorrectly lists bitcoin as being anonymous when it's quite the opposite (though with some finagling can approach the functionality of anonymity.) Also, in your example above, who's to say that Alice didn't give the money to Joe who then gave it to Bob? Or that Alice didn't buy something legal from Bob? Simply having serial numbers and tracking the money is not enough if the money can be transferred without the transactions being recorded (like they are at a bank). That immediately makes it a lot less useful for law enforcement.
- charonn0 11y ago
  I don't think that would work so well, since you could never prove how many intermediary cash-only transactions the bill has gone through before it was seen by the bank again.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Agreed, for a single transaction it would not meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold. However it might be possible to build a stronger case around a pattern of transactions, e.g. bills withdrawn from the ATM by Alice routinely appear in bank deposits by Bob. At some point this would harder to explain as random chance.
jbuzbee 11y ago
Cash is pretty much dead for me and has been for years. My wife and I use a credit card for every purchase we can, big or small. And we've never carried a balance, paying it off in full each month. I'm continually astounded at the offers that arrive in the mail such as "Spend $3000 in the first three months and get $500 in gift cards" (to places we go anyway). It's free money to us, paid for I assume by the high rates and carried-balances that others have.
- iwwr 11y ago
  Now think how an average Greek person feels when their banking system no longer works, denied access to electronic transactions and when bank accounts hold mere numbers that may or may not be actually recognized (or downright confiscated).
  - cameldrv 11y ago
    It's hard to imagine how the Greek banking system is going to recover from this. Everyone loaned them all of their money, and they weren't even getting any interest on it. Now they have to stand in line for 60 euros per day when it could have been in their mattress the whole time.
    - iwwr 11y ago
      The bigger problem is that money people have in banks, which is not borrowed and only belongs to private citizens is being plundered or destroyed. Second to that is an inability to access modern forms of transactions, which make running IT companies (and not only) an impossibility.
    - cpr 11y ago
      What's more, with the miracle of credit creation by modern banking, only 5% of their money is actually in the bank--the rest is out making more money for the bank. It's all a consensual hallucination which works only as long as everyone still has confidence in the system.
      - 11y ago
DominikR 11y ago
The push to abolish cash isn't about its supposed archaic or primitive nature, it is all about power and nothing else. On the one hand the state would know about every transaction made, on the other hand the state would hold immense power over its citizens by being able to flip a switch and shut certain persons out of this system. (by freezing their accounts) And then there's another aspect: In a cashless society only the ones that have jobs or can afford to incorporate a business could earn money. All the others would have to barter with smuggled cigarettes or vodka and even then they'd be unable to pay their electricity bill with whatever they've earned this way. In tough economic times there are many people that cannot get a regular job nor can afford to incorporate a business, and working illegally on construction sites or something like that has traditionally been a way for them and their families to survive and work themselves out of the gutter. If you take that away from them, they'll have to fully submit to the social system and I honestly doubt that this is a better way. Our western societies are slowly turning in a modern version of the Soviet Union, where the state has even more control over its population and its thoughts than the Soviet Union ever had. At least the Soviet Union had the decency to grant the masses that stayed clear of politics a safe life without a care in the world. Here in the West they are not even willing to give us that for giving our governments absolute control. The masses at the bottom have to struggle for mere survival.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  "the Soviet Union had the decency to grant the masses that stayed clear of politics a safe life" I have to note that it's only true about late Soviet Union (1955 onwards?), because earlier Soviet Union was explosively unsafe country where you could be shot "for being a spy to Japan", relocated to uninhabited island in Siberia during Winter to freeze there, or just starve in one of famines.
  - DominikR 11y ago
    You are absolutely correct. The bolshevik takeover of the country resulted in a fierce civil war where they basically wiped out the previous intelligentsia and large parts of the church. And then there were external threats (causing paranoia) and massive mismanagement because they ran their economy according to utopian phantasies, similar to what the Chinese did. (which also resulted in tens of millions starving to death) Only after the second world war the continent was sufficiently stabilized for a few decades and that's when the masses lived a decent life compared to what they had before.
mschuster91 11y ago
The advantage of cash is that it's not too difficult for a thief to drain my bank account without traces. When a thief tries to steal a wad of cash from my home safe though, he has the risk of leaving prints/DNA on the scene, getting caught on camera or being spotted by a neighbour.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Do you think it happens a lot that bank accounts get emptied without traces? I'm pretty sure it happens a lot that petty theft goes unsolved.
- rhino369 11y ago
  This is essentially the opposite of reality. If someone steals your cash nobody gives a shit. No csi team goes hunting them down. Bank fraud on the other hand is the banks problem. If someone steals your money the bank makes it whole.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    Huh? I don't remember the Cyprese people who got their accounts drained by the government ever got their money back. With cash the cops would have to raid my apartment to get the money (also likely they wouldn't know about the money in the first place, so no cop raid there!).
    - 9872 11y ago
      And there are countries in which the police would just shoot you and take your cash. That doesn't say anything about whether cash is better than electronic payments, it says don't live in such shitholes.
    - rhino369 11y ago
      If America was going to give a "haircut," they'd dilute the money supply instead of just taking 10% from banks. So yes, uncle sam can steal the money in your mattress without having access. Or the Fed could release a newDollar and only accept a certain amount of oldDollars. Russia (I think) has done that once or twice.
brickmort 11y ago
Before clicking through, I thought this was going to be about Johnny Cash...
7Figures2Commas 11y ago
The death of cash would ruin Magic City.
vbezhenar 11y ago
Cash might be outdated, but I don't like to give all my money to 3-rd party. I like Bitcoin idea: electronic currency, but I have full control over my money. Banks can play with bitcoin, providing their services and their pseudocurrency for microtransactions, but I always feel unsafe when I deposit more than $200.
pcr0 11y ago
Here in Hong Kong we have a contactless payment card called the Octopus, one of the most successful of its kind worldwide, and the basis for London's Oyster card. It's been around for almost two decades now. With the exception of taxis and smaller shops, Octopus is accepted pretty much everywhere. If I randomly decided to stop using cash for a month, it wouldn't be too hard. Nonetheless, cash is still everywhere. Some part due to necessity but mostly human nature.
- dd9990 11y ago
  "On July 20, Octopus acknowledged selling customers' personal details to Cigna and CPP, and started an internal review of their data practices" [1] That does not inspire confidence in me. The government is also the largest stakeholder in the company and I assume they and their security forces must love all the data it generates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card#Privacy_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card#Privacy_abuse
jkot 11y ago
I was in Greece a few weeks ago. ATMs did not worked, shops would not accept credit cards. Good luck without cash.
- StavrosK 11y ago
  You must have been to a different Greece, because I haven't seen an ATM that didn't work, or a shop that wouldn't accept credit cards. Then again, we do everything with cash, and cards are used for a very small minority of transactions. Your "good luck without cash" is self-defeating, because you're effectively saying "I was in a cash-only society the other day, good luck without cash". All this proves is that cash is not only alive and well, but king, at least in certain parts of the world.
  - jkot 11y ago
    I counted dozens ATMs out of cash in Athens. And technically ATMs are still not working, since there are strict withdrawal limits. And card did not worked, otherwise Greeks would just raided shops, buy stuff, and empty their bank accounts. And I see no problem in my comment. If cards would stop working in society which does not use cash at all, it would be even worse.
yc1010 11y ago
"There is simply no alternative system of payment that is as convenient, reliable and anonymous. Bitcoin is anonymous, but currently unstable and inconvenient" Being a nerd I have been using bitcoin since 2011, in last year almost on a daily basis, yes the rate is volatile but this will not be an issue once more people use it and the number is growing for sure (especially in the last few weeks alot of females joining the community due to backpage.com visa/mastercard ban), before this months rise the rate was remarkably stable for almost half a year As for "convenience" i find bitcoin a lot more damned convenient (and secure) than credit cards and delighted everytime i see it as a payment method, all i have to do is scan a QR code with my mycelium android phone wallet and send bitcoin with few taps, for storage I have a tiny USB hardware wallet (trezor) on my desk which keeps the private keys safe even if my computer gets infected
- StavrosK 11y ago
  150% agreed on the convenience. It's just far and away the most convenient method of electronic payment right now. Bar none. However, how are you using it daily? I struggle to find places to accept Bitcoin.
  - yc1010 11y ago
    I get paid by a trade partner in Singapore almost daily with bitcoin, saves us both a large chunk (and time) on wire transfers! I also rent out some of our servers for bitcoin (via bitpay) since there is no chargeback risk server (looks sideways at paypal/credit cards) of someone renting the server for a month and then leaving me with pants down at ankles and no money. As for spending bitcoin: * I have been buying all my hotels for a year now with expedia.com * All my shopping at amazon.com been via giftcards bought at gyft.com, same for amazon.co.uk and giftoff.com, there are many other places they sell giftcards for but these are the main ones i use every week. * For testing/deployment VPSs I have been using vultr.com * I pay regularly my utility bills like electric, phone, water using bitwa.la I even done a localbitcoins meetup and sold bitcoin for cash in last month, we had a great time having a coffee(s) and nerd chat during the trade :)
    - 11y ago
AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
This article, and many of the comments here, seem to be a very UK or US centric view to me. I'm from NZ and the use of cash is very rare here. People generally use EFTPOS cards or credit cards to pay for everything, from coffee or taxis to major purchases. The biggest annoyance when travelling (especially to the states) is the need to get out and carry cash again which for me (in my thirties) is something I haven't done here since my early teens. Maybe we just fear our government less, but I think we also have a more postmodernist view: We were one of the quickest to adopt EFTPOS. We also don't have a weird tipping culture, which helps :)
hukep 11y ago
Just my opinion. Soon or later we will have to return all the currencies to the gold standard. The current in debt monetary system is unsustainable.
- anon4 11y ago
  Gold is not inherently valuable. It's useless. That's why it was used to mint coins in the past, plus the fact that it's hard to get means counterfeiting is hard. Then people started attaching some mystical value quality to gold itself. Debt, however, is valuable. It's a direct expression of things owed and I very much like being owed stuff. Especially when I can choose what that stuff is later at my convenience.
comrade1 11y ago
I see articles here every other week talking about the end of cash and I don't know where they're coming from. This article finally takes a more realistic approach. The other articles don't match the reality of where I live (Switzerland). I don't think they match the reality of Germany and Austria either, and much of Europe. People here still pay for their cars in cash. I'm going to my bank on Monday to take out chf 7k to pay for my wife and mine yearly train passes. Is this just a u.s. And UK phenomena?
- analog31 11y ago
  I live in the US, and rarely use cash. My spouse and I pay for big ticket items like cars, by writing a check. I've visited Switzerland a few times, and noticed that the transit system (trains, buses, etc.) creates natural places where people go almost every day, that are convenient locations for things like banks and food stores. There's nothing like that in most of the US. My bank closed its branch office near my house, and now the closest branch is some distance away. So it's an extra trip to get cash. Now, if I use a check or debit card at the food store, then I can get some extra cash from the transaction. I also get a little bit of cash from playing music. My main use for cash is to give some to my kids if they need to buy something. Oddly enough, I take $1 bills out of my wallet and leave them at home, so I won't be tempted to buy snacks from vending machines during the day.
alkonaut 11y ago
From the recently posted article about Uber: > "Using Uber requires having a credit card, the lack of which, for many residents of the Bronx, one green-taxi driver once told me, made getting fares there very hard." What does that mean? Does it mean poor/working class people don't have bank accounts in the Bronx? Or does it mean Uber requires credit (and not merely a debit) card? I can see why an unemployed/poor person wouldn't have any credit, and thus no credit card. I don't understand why that person wouldn't have just a bank account with a debit card?
- ejcx 11y ago
  There is a significant percentage of the population without banking. The underbanked and unbanked percent in the US is pretty alarming to me. .[0] [0] - https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/ https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/
  - PhantomGremlin 11y ago
    There is a significant percentage of the population without banking. Traditional banks have always despised the poor. Historically this is why immigrants, union members, and other working class people formed credit unions. I don't know why the unbanked can't use those. Something has changed. A traditional credit union wouldn't kick out a member just because he became unemployed.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  > I don't understand why that person wouldn't have just a bank account with a debit card? http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-high-cost-for-the-poor-of-using-a-bank http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-high-cost-for... Basically, the poor can't absorb the fees, float, and inconvenience of a regular bank.
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    > Only thirty-nine per cent of non-interest-bearing checking accounts were free in 2011, Thanks. So 39% of the types of checking accounts investigated were actually free. If there is no bank that offers a $0/year account with a $0/year debit mastercard attached to it, then something is seriously wrong with the competition in the US consumer banking market. The article goes on a lot about payday loans, check cashing and so on, and mentions "fees" but doesn't really specify what those fees are, but checks and the fees and problems with them seem to be at the root of the problem. Couldn't Joe from the Bronx who works at McDonalds just get his $15/h straight to his no-fee account every month? Then buy his gas and toilet paper with his $0/year mastercard? This is how I (and likely much the rest of the world) has done it for many years now.
thirstywhimbrel 11y ago
Funny, I was just reading an article about WIRED's startup of the week, Velocity, an app pushing for transactionless restaurants, kind of the same way Uber takes the payment step out of cabs. (ie, you still pay, but it's not a big process.) BBC focuses on BTC, but maybe apps are the best path to the death of cash. Of course you never truly get rid of an anonymous fungible medium of exchange. There were a surge in Tide detergent thefts starting a few years back, to use it as a currency. 1. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/24/startup-of-the-week-velocity http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/24/startup-of-th... 2. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-are-criminals-stealing-tide-detergent-and-using-it-for-money/254631/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-are-... 3. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1?IR=T& http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1?... 4. http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/ http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/
mhuffman 11y ago
Ask people from central Florida how well things went for those with no cash when the last Hurricane came through and wiped out all electricity for a few weeks.
dcposch 11y ago
> People value cash differently than they value electronic money, even though the two have the exact same value. Except when they don't. To a Greek, 100k EUR in the bank today is worth some percentage of 100k EUR. His account is illiquid. There are currency controls. There may or may not be a "deposit haircut", like in Cyprus, where the numbers in the databases were simply all reduced. By the way, I'm very curious what the percentage is. The Greek guy certainly can't withdraw his 100k EUR retirement savings as cash, nor can he transfer them outside the country. He can still wire the money to another customer at the same Greek bank though, right? Say he finds someone on Craigslist who's willing to give him 90k EUR cash in return for that transfer. That would mean one Greek-bank-account-EUR is worth roughly 0.90 EUR. What's the actual rate right now? -- Bank accounts of every kind share an important property: they have counterparties. Colloquially, money may be "in an account", but in reality, your account is on the bank's balance sheet as a liability. When you deposit, you are actually lending your counterparty money. Some accounts have a reasonably trustworthy counterparty. Others, like a Cypriot savings account a few years ago, or an account at MtGox for that matter, did not. The idea that $X in a bank account is always worth the same as $X cash is a reassuring fiction. Counterparties are unavoidable in a centralized system. Counterparties vary in trustworthiness, and even a trustworthy counterparty today might not be tomorrow. -- I think this is a fundamental advantage of decentralized stores of value, including paper cash.

90 points by JacobAldridge 11y ago

I think the bit about cash versus bitcoin in the beginning leaves out an important detail about bitcoin: it doesn't require proximity, which can fraught with risk. In the situation of buying drugs, for example, Silk Road and its ancestors provide safety because people don't have to go to some shady house to buy their drugs. I agree that bitcoins aren't as convenient as cash, and as such I agree with the author that cash is here to stay. But bitcoins fill a niche nothing else can fill right now, and as such, bitcoins are here to stay too.

bdcravens 11y ago
> people don't have to go to some shady house to buy their drugs Most people don't go to shady houses, even those with very regular habits.

Fishman343 11y ago

I still only use cash everywhere it is possible to do so. Handing over a physical wad of cash or breaking into a £20 note is a mentally painful barrier that stops me spending any more than I have to. For me at least, handing over a piece of plastic and typing in a PIN doesn't carry the same weight yet.

ck425 11y ago
I do the same. Having to find an atm is also good at stopping me from getting money out for small spends like coffee or cake that I really don't need.
otherusername2 11y ago
For me it's not so much that handing over cash is mentally more painful. It's just that cash is inconvenient to obtain, so if I don't have enough of it on me, I won't buy that drink in the shop when I'm only 20 minutes from home. With plastic, there's always enough money, so I don't even have to think about it.

bsbechtel 11y ago

The discussion here is a story of what happens with every new technology replacing/disrupting an incumbent technology. Early in every new technology's lifespan, many predictions are often made that X new technology will kill Y old technology. However, what is really happening is that X new technology is replacing A, B, C, and D use cases for Y old technology. However, Y technology had use cases A, B, C, D, and E, so Y technology still has use case E and thus still exists. An example of this is the automobile. Horses are still around today and used by humans, despite the prevalence of internal combustion engines. This is something important to think about when evaluating new technologies and their value to society.

qmalxp 11y ago
For me, the only use case of cash is "The tiny fraction of vendors who don't accept debit." Oh, and I guess under-the-table payments.

nostromo 11y ago

Cash may not always be so anonymous. It seems plausible that banks at some point may start tracking bank notes by serial, or some other method, which would be very useful for law enforcement and the IRS. Example: Alice withdraws $100 from an ATM to buy illegal drugs from Bob, who then deposits it in his bank to pay rent. Bob is later found guilty of distributing drugs. Law enforcement could now request from his bank his deposit history, including bank note serial numbers. Repeated deposits of banknotes that were last seen from Alice could lead investigators to her door. It's the kind of big data tracking scheme that 10 years ago would be impossibly hard to do, but with today's technology wouldn't be so hard.

joesmo 11y ago
I don't think people will accept this. For people with other means of payment, the main function of cash is anonymous transactions. There is no other way to anonymously transfer money. The article incorrectly lists bitcoin as being anonymous when it's quite the opposite (though with some finagling can approach the functionality of anonymity.) Also, in your example above, who's to say that Alice didn't give the money to Joe who then gave it to Bob? Or that Alice didn't buy something legal from Bob? Simply having serial numbers and tracking the money is not enough if the money can be transferred without the transactions being recorded (like they are at a bank). That immediately makes it a lot less useful for law enforcement.
charonn0 11y ago
I don't think that would work so well, since you could never prove how many intermediary cash-only transactions the bill has gone through before it was seen by the bank again.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Agreed, for a single transaction it would not meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold. However it might be possible to build a stronger case around a pattern of transactions, e.g. bills withdrawn from the ATM by Alice routinely appear in bank deposits by Bob. At some point this would harder to explain as random chance.

jbuzbee 11y ago

Cash is pretty much dead for me and has been for years. My wife and I use a credit card for every purchase we can, big or small. And we've never carried a balance, paying it off in full each month. I'm continually astounded at the offers that arrive in the mail such as "Spend $3000 in the first three months and get $500 in gift cards" (to places we go anyway). It's free money to us, paid for I assume by the high rates and carried-balances that others have.

iwwr 11y ago
Now think how an average Greek person feels when their banking system no longer works, denied access to electronic transactions and when bank accounts hold mere numbers that may or may not be actually recognized (or downright confiscated).
- cameldrv 11y ago
  It's hard to imagine how the Greek banking system is going to recover from this. Everyone loaned them all of their money, and they weren't even getting any interest on it. Now they have to stand in line for 60 euros per day when it could have been in their mattress the whole time.
  - iwwr 11y ago
    The bigger problem is that money people have in banks, which is not borrowed and only belongs to private citizens is being plundered or destroyed. Second to that is an inability to access modern forms of transactions, which make running IT companies (and not only) an impossibility.
  - cpr 11y ago
    What's more, with the miracle of credit creation by modern banking, only 5% of their money is actually in the bank--the rest is out making more money for the bank. It's all a consensual hallucination which works only as long as everyone still has confidence in the system.
    - 11y ago

DominikR 11y ago

The push to abolish cash isn't about its supposed archaic or primitive nature, it is all about power and nothing else. On the one hand the state would know about every transaction made, on the other hand the state would hold immense power over its citizens by being able to flip a switch and shut certain persons out of this system. (by freezing their accounts) And then there's another aspect: In a cashless society only the ones that have jobs or can afford to incorporate a business could earn money. All the others would have to barter with smuggled cigarettes or vodka and even then they'd be unable to pay their electricity bill with whatever they've earned this way. In tough economic times there are many people that cannot get a regular job nor can afford to incorporate a business, and working illegally on construction sites or something like that has traditionally been a way for them and their families to survive and work themselves out of the gutter. If you take that away from them, they'll have to fully submit to the social system and I honestly doubt that this is a better way. Our western societies are slowly turning in a modern version of the Soviet Union, where the state has even more control over its population and its thoughts than the Soviet Union ever had. At least the Soviet Union had the decency to grant the masses that stayed clear of politics a safe life without a care in the world. Here in the West they are not even willing to give us that for giving our governments absolute control. The masses at the bottom have to struggle for mere survival.

guard-of-terra 11y ago
"the Soviet Union had the decency to grant the masses that stayed clear of politics a safe life" I have to note that it's only true about late Soviet Union (1955 onwards?), because earlier Soviet Union was explosively unsafe country where you could be shot "for being a spy to Japan", relocated to uninhabited island in Siberia during Winter to freeze there, or just starve in one of famines.
- DominikR 11y ago
  You are absolutely correct. The bolshevik takeover of the country resulted in a fierce civil war where they basically wiped out the previous intelligentsia and large parts of the church. And then there were external threats (causing paranoia) and massive mismanagement because they ran their economy according to utopian phantasies, similar to what the Chinese did. (which also resulted in tens of millions starving to death) Only after the second world war the continent was sufficiently stabilized for a few decades and that's when the masses lived a decent life compared to what they had before.

mschuster91 11y ago

The advantage of cash is that it's not too difficult for a thief to drain my bank account without traces. When a thief tries to steal a wad of cash from my home safe though, he has the risk of leaving prints/DNA on the scene, getting caught on camera or being spotted by a neighbour.

maxerickson 11y ago
Do you think it happens a lot that bank accounts get emptied without traces? I'm pretty sure it happens a lot that petty theft goes unsolved.
rhino369 11y ago
This is essentially the opposite of reality. If someone steals your cash nobody gives a shit. No csi team goes hunting them down. Bank fraud on the other hand is the banks problem. If someone steals your money the bank makes it whole.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  Huh? I don't remember the Cyprese people who got their accounts drained by the government ever got their money back. With cash the cops would have to raid my apartment to get the money (also likely they wouldn't know about the money in the first place, so no cop raid there!).
  - 9872 11y ago
    And there are countries in which the police would just shoot you and take your cash. That doesn't say anything about whether cash is better than electronic payments, it says don't live in such shitholes.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    If America was going to give a "haircut," they'd dilute the money supply instead of just taking 10% from banks. So yes, uncle sam can steal the money in your mattress without having access. Or the Fed could release a newDollar and only accept a certain amount of oldDollars. Russia (I think) has done that once or twice.

brickmort 11y ago

Before clicking through, I thought this was going to be about Johnny Cash...

7Figures2Commas 11y ago

The death of cash would ruin Magic City.

vbezhenar 11y ago

Cash might be outdated, but I don't like to give all my money to 3-rd party. I like Bitcoin idea: electronic currency, but I have full control over my money. Banks can play with bitcoin, providing their services and their pseudocurrency for microtransactions, but I always feel unsafe when I deposit more than $200.

pcr0 11y ago

Here in Hong Kong we have a contactless payment card called the Octopus, one of the most successful of its kind worldwide, and the basis for London's Oyster card. It's been around for almost two decades now. With the exception of taxis and smaller shops, Octopus is accepted pretty much everywhere. If I randomly decided to stop using cash for a month, it wouldn't be too hard. Nonetheless, cash is still everywhere. Some part due to necessity but mostly human nature.

dd9990 11y ago
"On July 20, Octopus acknowledged selling customers' personal details to Cigna and CPP, and started an internal review of their data practices" [1] That does not inspire confidence in me. The government is also the largest stakeholder in the company and I assume they and their security forces must love all the data it generates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card#Privacy_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card#Privacy_abuse

jkot 11y ago

I was in Greece a few weeks ago. ATMs did not worked, shops would not accept credit cards. Good luck without cash.

StavrosK 11y ago
You must have been to a different Greece, because I haven't seen an ATM that didn't work, or a shop that wouldn't accept credit cards. Then again, we do everything with cash, and cards are used for a very small minority of transactions. Your "good luck without cash" is self-defeating, because you're effectively saying "I was in a cash-only society the other day, good luck without cash". All this proves is that cash is not only alive and well, but king, at least in certain parts of the world.
- jkot 11y ago
  I counted dozens ATMs out of cash in Athens. And technically ATMs are still not working, since there are strict withdrawal limits. And card did not worked, otherwise Greeks would just raided shops, buy stuff, and empty their bank accounts. And I see no problem in my comment. If cards would stop working in society which does not use cash at all, it would be even worse.

yc1010 11y ago

"There is simply no alternative system of payment that is as convenient, reliable and anonymous. Bitcoin is anonymous, but currently unstable and inconvenient" Being a nerd I have been using bitcoin since 2011, in last year almost on a daily basis, yes the rate is volatile but this will not be an issue once more people use it and the number is growing for sure (especially in the last few weeks alot of females joining the community due to backpage.com visa/mastercard ban), before this months rise the rate was remarkably stable for almost half a year As for "convenience" i find bitcoin a lot more damned convenient (and secure) than credit cards and delighted everytime i see it as a payment method, all i have to do is scan a QR code with my mycelium android phone wallet and send bitcoin with few taps, for storage I have a tiny USB hardware wallet (trezor) on my desk which keeps the private keys safe even if my computer gets infected

StavrosK 11y ago
150% agreed on the convenience. It's just far and away the most convenient method of electronic payment right now. Bar none. However, how are you using it daily? I struggle to find places to accept Bitcoin.
- yc1010 11y ago
  I get paid by a trade partner in Singapore almost daily with bitcoin, saves us both a large chunk (and time) on wire transfers! I also rent out some of our servers for bitcoin (via bitpay) since there is no chargeback risk server (looks sideways at paypal/credit cards) of someone renting the server for a month and then leaving me with pants down at ankles and no money. As for spending bitcoin: * I have been buying all my hotels for a year now with expedia.com * All my shopping at amazon.com been via giftcards bought at gyft.com, same for amazon.co.uk and giftoff.com, there are many other places they sell giftcards for but these are the main ones i use every week. * For testing/deployment VPSs I have been using vultr.com * I pay regularly my utility bills like electric, phone, water using bitwa.la I even done a localbitcoins meetup and sold bitcoin for cash in last month, we had a great time having a coffee(s) and nerd chat during the trade :)
  - 11y ago

AdeptusAquinas 11y ago

This article, and many of the comments here, seem to be a very UK or US centric view to me. I'm from NZ and the use of cash is very rare here. People generally use EFTPOS cards or credit cards to pay for everything, from coffee or taxis to major purchases. The biggest annoyance when travelling (especially to the states) is the need to get out and carry cash again which for me (in my thirties) is something I haven't done here since my early teens. Maybe we just fear our government less, but I think we also have a more postmodernist view: We were one of the quickest to adopt EFTPOS. We also don't have a weird tipping culture, which helps :)

hukep 11y ago

Just my opinion. Soon or later we will have to return all the currencies to the gold standard. The current in debt monetary system is unsustainable.

anon4 11y ago
Gold is not inherently valuable. It's useless. That's why it was used to mint coins in the past, plus the fact that it's hard to get means counterfeiting is hard. Then people started attaching some mystical value quality to gold itself. Debt, however, is valuable. It's a direct expression of things owed and I very much like being owed stuff. Especially when I can choose what that stuff is later at my convenience.

comrade1 11y ago

I see articles here every other week talking about the end of cash and I don't know where they're coming from. This article finally takes a more realistic approach. The other articles don't match the reality of where I live (Switzerland). I don't think they match the reality of Germany and Austria either, and much of Europe. People here still pay for their cars in cash. I'm going to my bank on Monday to take out chf 7k to pay for my wife and mine yearly train passes. Is this just a u.s. And UK phenomena?

analog31 11y ago
I live in the US, and rarely use cash. My spouse and I pay for big ticket items like cars, by writing a check. I've visited Switzerland a few times, and noticed that the transit system (trains, buses, etc.) creates natural places where people go almost every day, that are convenient locations for things like banks and food stores. There's nothing like that in most of the US. My bank closed its branch office near my house, and now the closest branch is some distance away. So it's an extra trip to get cash. Now, if I use a check or debit card at the food store, then I can get some extra cash from the transaction. I also get a little bit of cash from playing music. My main use for cash is to give some to my kids if they need to buy something. Oddly enough, I take $1 bills out of my wallet and leave them at home, so I won't be tempted to buy snacks from vending machines during the day.

alkonaut 11y ago

From the recently posted article about Uber: > "Using Uber requires having a credit card, the lack of which, for many residents of the Bronx, one green-taxi driver once told me, made getting fares there very hard." What does that mean? Does it mean poor/working class people don't have bank accounts in the Bronx? Or does it mean Uber requires credit (and not merely a debit) card? I can see why an unemployed/poor person wouldn't have any credit, and thus no credit card. I don't understand why that person wouldn't have just a bank account with a debit card?

ejcx 11y ago
There is a significant percentage of the population without banking. The underbanked and unbanked percent in the US is pretty alarming to me. .[0] [0] - https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/ https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  There is a significant percentage of the population without banking. Traditional banks have always despised the poor. Historically this is why immigrants, union members, and other working class people formed credit unions. I don't know why the unbanked can't use those. Something has changed. A traditional credit union wouldn't kick out a member just because he became unemployed.
ceejayoz 11y ago
> I don't understand why that person wouldn't have just a bank account with a debit card? http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-high-cost-for-the-poor-of-using-a-bank http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-high-cost-for... Basically, the poor can't absorb the fees, float, and inconvenience of a regular bank.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  > Only thirty-nine per cent of non-interest-bearing checking accounts were free in 2011, Thanks. So 39% of the types of checking accounts investigated were actually free. If there is no bank that offers a $0/year account with a $0/year debit mastercard attached to it, then something is seriously wrong with the competition in the US consumer banking market. The article goes on a lot about payday loans, check cashing and so on, and mentions "fees" but doesn't really specify what those fees are, but checks and the fees and problems with them seem to be at the root of the problem. Couldn't Joe from the Bronx who works at McDonalds just get his $15/h straight to his no-fee account every month? Then buy his gas and toilet paper with his $0/year mastercard? This is how I (and likely much the rest of the world) has done it for many years now.

thirstywhimbrel 11y ago

Funny, I was just reading an article about WIRED's startup of the week, Velocity, an app pushing for transactionless restaurants, kind of the same way Uber takes the payment step out of cabs. (ie, you still pay, but it's not a big process.) BBC focuses on BTC, but maybe apps are the best path to the death of cash. Of course you never truly get rid of an anonymous fungible medium of exchange. There were a surge in Tide detergent thefts starting a few years back, to use it as a currency. 1. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/24/startup-of-the-week-velocity http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/24/startup-of-th... 2. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-are-criminals-stealing-tide-detergent-and-using-it-for-money/254631/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-are-... 3. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1?IR=T& http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1?... 4. http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/ http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/

mhuffman 11y ago

Ask people from central Florida how well things went for those with no cash when the last Hurricane came through and wiped out all electricity for a few weeks.

dcposch 11y ago

> People value cash differently than they value electronic money, even though the two have the exact same value. Except when they don't. To a Greek, 100k EUR in the bank today is worth some percentage of 100k EUR. His account is illiquid. There are currency controls. There may or may not be a "deposit haircut", like in Cyprus, where the numbers in the databases were simply all reduced. By the way, I'm very curious what the percentage is. The Greek guy certainly can't withdraw his 100k EUR retirement savings as cash, nor can he transfer them outside the country. He can still wire the money to another customer at the same Greek bank though, right? Say he finds someone on Craigslist who's willing to give him 90k EUR cash in return for that transfer. That would mean one Greek-bank-account-EUR is worth roughly 0.90 EUR. What's the actual rate right now? -- Bank accounts of every kind share an important property: they have counterparties. Colloquially, money may be "in an account", but in reality, your account is on the bank's balance sheet as a liability. When you deposit, you are actually lending your counterparty money. Some accounts have a reasonably trustworthy counterparty. Others, like a Cypriot savings account a few years ago, or an account at MtGox for that matter, did not. The idea that $X in a bank account is always worth the same as $X cash is a reassuring fiction. Counterparties are unavoidable in a centralized system. Counterparties vary in trustworthiness, and even a trustworthy counterparty today might not be tomorrow. -- I think this is a fundamental advantage of decentralized stores of value, including paper cash.