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

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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

#281

Post by tyfon »

noodlesUK wrote: post #265
tyfon wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children and old people here all use cards or apps. And derisking is illegal, so you have to provide a bank account and cards to anyone who wants. The high risk customers just need more follow-up on terms of AML.

Where are you based where derisking is illegal? Here in the UK it makes the news fairly frequently when someone notable becomes unbanked because of CIFAS or SARs or similar. Also, I wasn’t able to get a debit card until I was 12, but perhaps that has changed over the past few decades.

I live in Norway.

My kids got a card at around 5, but they are older now. Not with visa/mastercard of course :)

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

#282

Post by Kiro »

Alifatisk wrote: post #33

I believe once we go fully cashless, we'll regret it and wish we could go back. I can barely enjoy a full day without being required to bring my phone / debit card with me because the register does not accept cash.

I doubt it. The Nordics have been cashless for a long time and the personal inconvenience in the transition was essentially none. It went by pretty much unnoticed and I don't think many people miss cash or wants to go back.

Now I am against a cashless society for other reasons, mainly ideological, but claiming it's less convenient feels odd.

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

#283

Post by pasttense01 »

berkes wrote: post #146
ajmurmann wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, I also anecdotally know many more people who lost Bitcoin due to bad key management or keeping their Bitcoin in a platform that failed instead of cold storage. I don't personally know a single person whose money disappeared from their bank account for no reason.

I too know far more people who lost Bitcoin due to mistakes, or negligence or such. But I also know quite a lot of people who lost a lot of money in the 2018 banking crisis. So I highly doubt your really don't personally know a single person who lost money this way.

How did people lose money in the 2018 banking crisis? My understanding is that bank deposits were fully insured in that crisis--whether or not they exceeded FDIC insurance limits.

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

#284

Post by VSGrode »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #112
venusenvy47 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it raise the value of the currency if the central bank didn't know this stash was destroyed? It seems like this pile of cash would still be considered to be "in circulation" until the central bank declared it to not be.

The central bank's knowledge isn't relevant in any way. The value of the currency goes up because the willingness of people to spend it went down. You can't spend money that doesn't exist, so this effect will occur regardless of anyone's knowledge of anything.

[dead]

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

#285

Post by huytersd »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #102

There are two fallacies I frequently feel the need to debunk in this discussion. - Cash is anonymous - Cash is an "old" or "low" technology. When a serious crime is committed you might be surprised how much the police can do to trace cash. Serial numbers in and out of ATMs and shops are tracked, and frequently your face is captured by cameras in stores, ATMs and vending machines. Modern cash is high technology . Look…

Cash is very easily tumbled or made anonymous. It’s as simple as going to a casino, buying a large number of chips and then cashing those chips out again.

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

#286

Post by SoftTalker »

noodlesUK wrote: post #152
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…

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.

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

#287

Post by vlovich123 »

berkes wrote: post #146
ajmurmann wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, I also anecdotally know many more people who lost Bitcoin due to bad key management or keeping their Bitcoin in a platform that failed instead of cold storage. I don't personally know a single person whose money disappeared from their bank account for no reason.

I too know far more people who lost Bitcoin due to mistakes, or negligence or such. But I also know quite a lot of people who lost a lot of money in the 2018 banking crisis. So I highly doubt your really don't personally know a single person who lost money this way.

> But I also know quite a lot of people who lost a lot of money in the 2018 banking crisis. So I highly doubt your really don't personally know a single person who lost money this way.

That’s like saying I know people who lost money due to Bitcoin volatility due to massive crashes. Losing money in the 2018 banking crisis was a result of your property value falling and thus your mortgage was underwater, not because money in the bank itself disappeared in some way.

You basically brought up something totally unrelated to the common failure modes of Bitcoin being discussed about a totally unrelated industry (2018 banking crisis was not about personal banking issues but about a massive credit crunch in bank investment arms due to speculative losses that rippled out into other markets)

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

#288

Post by tyfon »

lelandfe wrote: post #270
tyfon wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children and old people here all use cards or apps. And derisking is illegal, so you have to provide a bank account and cards to anyone who wants. The high risk customers just need more follow-up on terms of AML.

If you’re homeless (and esp. if lacking ID), getting a bank account is a pretty tall order.

Cash is not illegal here, in fact shops are required by law to also accept cash.

However the homeless problem is virtually non existent in this country, same with the lack of id.

It's just so much more convenient to use digital payments that almost nobody use cash anymore.

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

#289

Post by somenameforme »

hhh wrote: post #258
dr_dshiv wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, Americans with their 2-4% transaction tax, it’s so funny. No seriously, when I first moved to the Netherlands I was wondering what kind of backwards country wouldn’t let me use a credit card at the grocery store. And that’s when I learned about how crazy it is that credit cards and even American debit cards have such needlessly high transaction fees.

I use an Visa tied to an American bank every day for groceries in NL. I only have ever had issues using a card at a very small record store, I just make sure to carry 100eur in cash just in case. I do have more issues online when something only takes iDEAL though.

I'm sure you're aware of this - though others may not be: another trick US banks use is gouging you on exchange rates. My bank was charging something like a 0.5% fee visible fee and then an invisible fee several times that in exchange rate gouging. I found trying to use US banks abroad an absolutely painful experience, to the point I swapped my banking abroad which is itself a huge PITA thanks to FATCA and other stuff making Americans borderline persona non grata at most foreign banks.

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

#290

Post by _xivi »

madsbuch wrote: post #237
_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 usually the go-to arguments for cash, though I think it is not the right ones. The right argument is privacy. These things can be handled easily: In case of an emergency you can just revert to writing credit notes to each other, which is is spirit the same as cash (contracts denoting that someone owes you something). > On personal level: Maybe your wallet and phone was stolen This is the same as forgetting to…

> It is also handled quite well already, as modern people have credit cards in their wallet, in their phone and on their watch. So there is already a 3-way backup that needs to break.

Personally, I'd not use the word 'backup' if you can lose all three in a single accident. Also, these are just different forms of access, none of these would work if the infrastructure is down. It seems you dodged my points.

I'm not advocating for cash, more like warning that an online-only system isn't resilient enough in the first place.

In the scenarios I provided, if cash doesn't exist (as per OP wishes), the only solution I see would be going back to trading goods/services. What valuable possession/skills does a person have.

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