Uber is trying to address the Credit Card issues after it noticed that lots of Singaporeans, maids and foreign labor do not have credit cards but still needs the service. They accept cash now.
https://www.techinasia.com/uber-cash-payments-singapore
ZAMBIAN KWACHA
BELARUSIAN RUBLE
All currencies, all are as volatile as can be.
Didn't realize how dire the listing situation was there
:-p
Bitcoin doesn't really have "domestic products", that is things that are denominated in it.
So, low volatility is a quality criterion for money, and those currencies fulfil it (domestically).
In time of war or hyper inflation, domestic currency might get too volatile, and that's when people switch to other money, such a cigarettes or foreign currency.
Source: lived under a hyperinflation of 1900%/year and people did not switch currencies.
I'm guessing that we're secretly talking about Bitcoin here; I think that what BTC needs is some organization that controls a lot of capital, and is willing to underwrite the value of the bitcoin. Fiat currencies work to the extent that their issuing countries can underwrite their value (by accepting the currency in payment of debts, primarily); precious metals work to the extent that there's non-monetary demand for them (so gold isn't actually very valuable in an apocalypse -- look at prices in the Siege of Sarajevo, discussed in a survivalist blog a few years back). Bitcoin doesn't really have either of these. It's a sort of fiscal hot potato -- good for exchange, certainly, but you wouldn't want to be the last person with all the world's bitcoin if everyone else lost interest in it.
The BTC mechanism for attempting price stability on the other hand does the opposite: the supply is designed to grow very steadily, but with no reason whatsoever to believe a stable and sustainable demand for that particular cryptocurrency exists in future.
[1]Hyperinflations occur when the supply of money grows steadily without even bigger growth in future demand obligations, which in practice invariably happens because the government has resorted to printing it to discharge debts and release people from future tax obligations. This actually looks more like a Bitcoin economy (albeit with more potential for the money supply to grow really, really quickly) in that what the government is doing is decoupling supply from demand.
The risk of Wiemar-like circumstances striking again in the West are basically zero, unless a Wiemar-like perfect storm of defeat and ignorance strikes again; and even then, hyperinflation never lasts long (no one can live under it for long). One woman weathered the Wiemar hyperinflation by selling one link of a gold Rosary chain a day to buy food; a quite modest amount of precious metal is enough to outlast this sort of disaster.
How about Venezuela then ?
debit cards are electronic cash.
- Android phones are dominant in this market, since local manufacturers are able to sell cheap phones without incurring any software development cost.
- Telecommunication sector is heavily privatized in these markets & generally have multiple players offering low cost "pre-paid" services. Recharge stations and mobile stores are pretty ubiquitous - small mom & pop shops double up as resellers of these services , providing last mile coverage.
- On the contrary, Banking infrastructure is so heavily state run. And they don't have the same level of 'ease of access'. So, a lot of people working in the "unorganized sector"(Note: This is an official terminology that governments recognize and use) don't have formal accounts in financial institutions.
- Even if they did, a good number of banks run decade old tools and softwares. Making it all the more difficult to do mobile & online banking .
- And also, most of these economies are not cashless. Culturally and for other reasons,there is more trust on "Paper Cash".
- Finally , just because a person owns a cheap smart phone & ,one cannot assume banking literacy.
When the cell phone companies came up with a service to transfer cell phone credits to other users, people started using that as currency. Only problem is each company runs its own proprietary system and there is no way to send credit to a someone who uses a different cell phone company.
If you think about it, phone companies have the best micro-transaction infrastructure on the planet. They are constantly charging people fractions of a penny per second per phone call.
m-pesa is a good start, at the least.
[1] https://vulcanpost.com/171862/grabtaxi-uber-challenge-cashle...
One interesting thing an Uber driver told me is that, depending on the area of the city, the majority of people pay with cash or with card. So when he needs cash he drives to a certain area to catch a service.