Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry • Hacker News Board

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#311

Post by nayuki » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:48 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #239

happytiger wrote: post #148

Not using cash means someone gets a cut of a processing fee. Every time, with almost no exceptions. I’m not down to have rent seeking companies taking a slice of my hard earned money just so I don’t have to manage a few pieces of paper. You’re generally paying 3-4 percent of every transaction now, as that’s pretty standard for debit cards on businesses, and it doesn’t matter if it’s charged to the card holder or the…

Exchanging value between two economical entities using pieces of paper seems crazy when you have better ways. Try to explain buying with cash in 200 years to someone who never seen it. What if I need to pay just a little, do I tear a bit of the paper? No, you can't tear. If your piece of paper is worth too much then the seller gives you other pieces of paper worth less. Can I throw out the rest of paper after I'm don…

Exchanging value between two economic entities using primitive card numbers seems crazy when you have better ways.

Try to explain buying with a credit card online 200 years ago to someone who has never seen it.

You type in about 23 digits (16-digit card number, 4-digit expiry month, 3-digit verification code) to make a payment.

But these digits only change every few years as you renew your credit card. So many parties will learn of your digits and you won't know who leaked them.

The merchant on the other end can take out any amount of money from your account; it's pull-based, not push-based.

The merchant on the other end can trap you in a recurring subscription without your knowledge or make it very hard to cancel.

People have credit limits in the thousands of dollars, and in any single transaction you are liable to lose that much money. Meanwhile, you can't lose more than the hundreds of dollars of cash in your wallet.

You can call your card issuer to dispute charges, but now you're at the mercy of an intermediary.

The intermediary skims about 2~4% of every transaction, for the luxury of being able to spend your own money.

You can't process certain types of transactions in an offline environment, such as debit cards during a power outage or on an airplane (though Wi-Fi is slowly becoming more common).

And you think cash is crazy?

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#312

Post by CraigJPerry » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:49 PM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #176

CraigJPerry wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bank of England destroys between 10-30 billion pounds worth of notes per year (no longer fit for circulation). Sterling has other issuing banks too beyond BoE. I don’t think it’s possible to measure 1m notes going absent by any observable metric. Even if it were possible, the purchasing power wouldn’t change - you coffee shop wouldn’t reduce their prices but they might adjust staffing levels in an extreme case (n…

Correct, it's the rarety of all others bank notes that is increased, increasing purchasing power is only one consequence possible but not the only one. By the way, being hard to measure doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And there are plenty of things easy to measure that are meaningless

Bank notes are not re-issued 1:1 with destroyed notes.

>> being hard to measure doesn't mean it doesn't exist

No in this context it does. Either you can measure the increase purchasing power or you can’t. And if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist in this specific case.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#313

Post by GordonS » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:51 PM UTC

wiredfool wrote: post #272

madsbuch wrote: post #11

I Denmark we are removing the 1000kr bill as of May 2025. from then on the highest bill. is 500kr which is roughly equal to 80 usd. Denmark Is the most cashless society I have yet experiences (and I have been traveling a fair bit). This comes with pros and cons. and I think the reason why it works is because of an incredibly high social trust.

My eldest has gone off to uni in Scotland this year, and he’s literally spent no cash at all in his time there. The only cash he uses are 1 pound coins for the gym lockers, and they return when you’re done. He spent 3 months in Germany last year, and used cash for just about everything.

Scot here! Especially since the advent of Apple and Google Pay, more and more people use cashless payments - with our phones always on our person these days, it's very convenient.

There are still some holdouts though - it's only recently I've started to see taxis that routinely accept card payments, and without a ludicrous extra processing fee.

I've travelled a lot, and I'd say Norway, Sweden and Denmark are all way ahead of Scotland in terms of cashless.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#314

Post by nayuki » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:51 PM UTC

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #276

fzeroracer wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has always been able to shut you down. If they wanted to, they would pull you aside with no recourse and the police would execute civil forfeiture (see also: steal) against anything on your person, car or home. Cash makes this worse. Nor does it save you from 90% of transactions you do. Banks will know when you deposit/withdraw money. Stores know the moment you walk in. Unless you deal purely in cash (…

There's a qualitative difference between the government being able to freeze the accounts of every person whose phone was detected at a protest, and the government having to send agents out to physically find each of those people, search them and their property, and seize their cash. The first is cheap and easy for the government to do on a large scale, and difficult for the protesters to block. The second is far mor…

It sounds like you're still upset about the truckers protest in Ottawa in February 2022.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#315

Post by fundad » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:51 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #229

dazc wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money isn't instant though. People paying for such services with a cheque would do well living a few weeks in someone else's shoes.

90% of the people I'm paying are businesses. If an individual wants cash they can ask and I'll pay cash. I wouldn't just assume someone prefers everyone to be paying them in cash or screwing around with various electronic payment options that aren't super-common where I live.

My house cost $240 to clean. Handing around fat envelopes like a wise guy is a macho dream but not practical.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#316

Post by standardUser » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:52 PM UTC

ACS_Solver wrote: post #118

madsbuch wrote: post #11

I Denmark we are removing the 1000kr bill as of May 2025. from then on the highest bill. is 500kr which is roughly equal to 80 usd. Denmark Is the most cashless society I have yet experiences (and I have been traveling a fair bit). This comes with pros and cons. and I think the reason why it works is because of an incredibly high social trust.

I'm in Sweden, a strong contender for the most cashless country, and I don't know what the banknotes look like. They were changed some 5 or 6 years ago and I haven't paid with or even withdrawn cash since then. For illustration, cash is generally not accepted outside of grocery stores and some chains. For a typical restaurant, coffee shop or takeaway there's very little chance they take cash. Street vendors may take…

> I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country.

That's fine for you but some of us need to buy illegal drugs.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#317

Post by EasyMark » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:52 PM UTC

Yeah it sucks. I can't quite put my finger on it, but is seems like giving up every transaction to the government and corps. That seems like a terrible terrible thing just for a little bit more convenience. I have some bit of hope though, it seems like Gen Z is seeing that "tech fixes everything" is bullshit and see to be enjoying less materialistic and "gotta get the latest/greatest". Millennials were likewise less materialistic than Gen X. Hopefully people come around to using tech where it makes sense and use it less in those areas that are detrimental to quality of life and where simple solutions work just fine.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#318

Post by gizmo » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:53 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #286

noodlesUK wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were already costs. There were always costs and risks associated with cash handling: armored trucks doing cash collection, risks of money in tills being lost. If it really were a lot cheaper you wouldn’t see businesses clamouring to go cashless. That’s not to say I think cash should go the way of the dodo, but I don’t think there’s that much difference paying g4s to collect your money vs Mastercard. IMO the ben…

Yes there are costs to handling cash. And they are vastly higher than the cost of handling bits. A 3% fee to write some bits to a database is insane. A 3% fee to pay all the people who need to handle the currency in a cash transaction is probably not covering costs.

That’s such a misrepresentation. The credit card fees exist because customers get benefits like delivery insurance, return insurance, holiday insurance, cashback, free credit, etc. If you just want to transfer bits you can do that for next to no fees (in Europe, where digital payments without consumer protections are common).

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#319

Post by _xivi » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:53 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #301

_xivi wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't like cash and am happy to see it basically dead in the country. What would you do in case of a emergency or natural distaster? Basically a situation where any of the following is not available for any period of time: power, network, financial infrastructure, access to digital devices. 1. On personal level: Maybe your wallet and phone was stolen 2. Region: Power/Network is down 3. National level: the…

This is a real concern, but even if I keep cash for use in an emergency, stores and banks would also need to be prepared to handle cash in an emergency and I doubt they are today (since no one uses cash). Telling people they need to use a less convenient payment method only to keep it alive for an emergency also seems doomed to fail. The correct solution is probably to force banks and critical stores to always accept…

> Telling people they need to use a less convenient payment method only to keep it alive for an emergency also seems doomed to fail.

Who said that? Certainly not me

Personally, I'm not advocating for cash. I just think it's stupid to brag about eliminating cash while putting all your savings and trust in a fragile system and infrastructure . There's nothing revolutionary about that.

People should have options and backups.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#320

Post by EasyMark » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:54 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #261

CommanderData wrote: post #233

The ability to shutdown any persons the government doesn't like using any growing list of $Excuses is worrying. Currency is a freedom to perform transaction and arguably a given right, it's existed since humans learnt trade. Cash allows anyone to transact without a prerequisite or control. Two parties. Centralised digital currency will change it. That worry doesn't even include the privacy concerns and as systems bec…

The government has always been able to shut you down. If they wanted to, they would pull you aside with no recourse and the police would execute civil forfeiture (see also: steal) against anything on your person, car or home. Cash makes this worse. Nor does it save you from 90% of transactions you do. Banks will know when you deposit/withdraw money. Stores know the moment you walk in. Unless you deal purely in cash (…

just like security it's a spectrum and not a 0 or 1. I could live on cash right now if I wanted to, so it isn't 90%. If the government stops issue it and issues debit cards only or allows banks to do it then that becomes impossible. The government could always come to your house and disappear you or trump up some charges and throw you in prison indefinitely, even in the USA, so that's not really an argument