Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 78 posts

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#51

Post by Spooky23 »

RandallBrown wrote: post #41
mod wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "Businesses are experimenting with going cashless, hoping to speed up transactions, combat theft and create a safer environment for their employees." As the owner of a brick and mortar business (a bar), I can tell you that we do about 60% cash transactions. I just put in an ATM to try to up that number. I'm tired of paying close to 3% fees on cards. We have had some cash theft from employees but to…

I never thought about cashless places doing it because they were worried about theft from employees. I assumed it was to prevent thieves from coming in and robbing the place. (Makes total sense though that employees would be much more likely to do the stealing)

My grandfather owned bars and would fire any honest bartender. His philosophy was that a bartender who wasn’t stealing was smarter than he was.

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#52

Post by Aloha »

mnm1 wrote: post #35

After hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the blackout lasted for months. I assume no one was getting any money out of ATMs or using credit/debit cards or Apple pay or anything like that. You don't have to distrust the financial system to want cash on hand. You just need to have a rudimentary understanding of the fragility of the current system. I simply cannot see a cash less society ever existing while the only altern…

This is the biggest reason I keep cash around.

Also, I travel on business frequently, I have my wallet and a passport wallet, and I keep some cash in each - in the passport wallet enough to get a cab out of the airport to a hotel, where presumably I can garner a room using my rewards points or have my company wire me money.

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#53

Post by walshemj »

mod wrote: post #8
oh_sigh wrote: post #3

What's the motivation for a store to not accept cash? Is it possible that cash has a > 3% "fee"(or whatever stores pay for cc processing) when you roll in cash registers, armored car services, employee handling time, theft, etc?

From the article: "Businesses are experimenting with going cashless, hoping to speed up transactions, combat theft and create a safer environment for their employees." As the owner of a brick and mortar business (a bar), I can tell you that we do about 60% cash transactions. I just put in an ATM to try to up that number. I'm tired of paying close to 3% fees on cards. We have had some cash theft from employees but to…

Probably start up business or popups who might not qualify for traditional banking or don't wasn't to go through the hoops.

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#54

Post by AlchemistCamp »

scottLobster wrote: post #27
chabes wrote: post #5

I closed my bank accounts in 2011. Cash is my currency of choice for most things. I use bitcoin for long term savings. Cold storage is safer than a bunch of cash under the mattress.

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/price/ So you're losing money on inflation, and your long term savings are in one of the most volatile assets on the market that derives its value largely from illegal and gray-market transactions. I wish you luck. But frankly you'd likely be better off putting your long term savings in Boeing stock, and that's saying something.

> your long term savings are in one of the most volatile assets on the market

Due to dollar cost averaging, this is actually a very good thing!

The other major question is what BTC's value is going to be in the long term, when they retire and transition from a net saver to a net spender.

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#55

Post by fennecfoxen »

rolltiide wrote: post #50
fennecfoxen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, those routine inflationary / deflationary episodes that can see the Bitcoin-denominated price of your services (just to use an example) rise and fall by 400% in a year, easily? Very practical! These intermediate bank accounts will soon be a thing of the past.

> the Bitcoin-denominated price of your services (just to use an example) rise and fall by 400% in a year Yeah its a bad example because thats not whats happening at all. Criticisms are possible but yours are so far off that I guess these are called weak strawman arguments? I don't think this was intentional as its seems more like a precompiled argument that isn't really a response to this situation so I will tell yo…

> When the actual payment occurs we use the agreed upon index to use the dollar price, paid in crypto and this takes a few seconds to execute and even in the volatile crypto markets usually nothing is happening in this time frame.

Ah, so unlike the person using it for savings that you're replying to, you're basically just paying someone for the overhead of getting that money to a real bank account, through a novelty payment mechanism, to avoid regulators.

I mean, that's a step up, at least. Good luck with FATCA Mk II, Cryptocurrency Edition.

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#56

Post by 1337biz »

fattire wrote: post #42
Spooky23 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same concern and tracked it. In my family’s case, making cash our primary spending vehicle reduced our 2018 spending 7% vs 2017 when we were card focused. The value of the credit card point is about 2% best case. Points exist to create a fomo attachment to the card.

Why did you spend less?

My guess is that it reduced impulse purchases because it creates for the 'giving money for x' moment a much more visual experience.

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#57

Post by chiph »

marcoseliziario wrote: post #49
scottLobster wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but I get paid for that in a combination of cash back and points. I limit my credit card information sharing as much as the privacy preferences allow, but I'm not about to give up hundreds or thousands of dollars a year in value because Google might show me an ad I won't click on anyway.

Here in Brazil is legal for companies to charge a bit less for products if you pay in cash, because they don't have to pay 5% of the transaction for a bank when you're paying in cash. Banks fought heavily against this law, of course.

In the US, Visa & Mastercard now allow a merchant to have a surcharge for card purchases (their policy changed in 2013), but whether you get hit by this will vary by state. And of course a merchant may build this surcharge into their prices so you don't see it. I have seen small restaurants (usually pizza places, for some reason) offer discounts for cash. If it's a local business you can always ask if a discount for cash is available.

https://lawpay.com/about/blog/can-you-charge-a-fee-or-surcha...

(disclosure: I used to work for a sister company of LawPay)

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#58

Post by orf »

ellisv wrote: post #37
Spooky23 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same concern and tracked it. In my family’s case, making cash our primary spending vehicle reduced our 2018 spending 7% vs 2017 when we were card focused. The value of the credit card point is about 2% best case. Points exist to create a fomo attachment to the card.

Was this because of using cash or simply paying more attention to spending? I’d love to see a well done research paper to get a sense of the expected value of cash vs credit.

It's pretty obvious and well known that if you disassociate the cost of something from the actual monetary value, people find it harder to conflate the two.

This is the reason that you didn't buy a $20 XBox game, you brought a game with 1,700 Microsoft points.

You don't buy this skin for a game for $14, that's way too expensive! Who would pay that! However when it's on sale for 3,200 Riot points? That's a great deal!

If you wanted to strike a death blow to the micropayments industry you'd just need to force them to put the actual monetary price against each loot box/gem bundle/whatever rather than obscuring it with a made up currency that nobody can evaluate cost against.

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#59

Post by rolltiide »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #55
rolltiide wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Bitcoin-denominated price of your services (just to use an example) rise and fall by 400% in a year Yeah its a bad example because thats not whats happening at all. Criticisms are possible but yours are so far off that I guess these are called weak strawman arguments? I don't think this was intentional as its seems more like a precompiled argument that isn't really a response to this situation so I will tell yo…

> When the actual payment occurs we use the agreed upon index to use the dollar price, paid in crypto and this takes a few seconds to execute and even in the volatile crypto markets usually nothing is happening in this time frame. Ah, so unlike the person using it for savings that you're replying to, you're basically just paying someone for the overhead of getting that money to a real bank account, through a novelty…

its not really avoiding its just more convenient as the private sector itself has made it more difficult since they don't want the compliance burden of opening accounts for American signers

we'll comply with any applicable regulation. if we have to start filing FBAR's for on-chain or off-chain custodial cryptocurrency holdings we'll do it, while also seeing if there is an applicable exemption, while also having our lawyers write to the Treasury during the comment period to suggest they not pursue this route

Re: Currency is popular again, especially the $100 bill

#60

Post by chiph »

mnm1 wrote: post #35

After hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the blackout lasted for months. I assume no one was getting any money out of ATMs or using credit/debit cards or Apple pay or anything like that. You don't have to distrust the financial system to want cash on hand. You just need to have a rudimentary understanding of the fragility of the current system. I simply cannot see a cash less society ever existing while the only altern…

I keep a few hundred with my hurricane supplies. After Hugo, I was without power for 10 days (which is nothing compared to what PR went through), and having some cash on hand would have made that time easier.
Post reply on HN