Will Cash Disappear?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This was the mid 80s.
$100 in tens and twenties would be nearly $300 in twenties and fifties. Ten 100 dollar bills would now need to be thirty (or we would need a 300 dollar note). If my grandfather went on three trips in the same calendar month, inflation adjusted for 2017, he'd get audited by the Bank Secrecy act ($10k in cash transfers in the same month).
For cash to get relegated to a curiosity at this point only requires the government to not change anything (larger denominations, increase the limits for triggering money laundering audits &c.)
Are regulatory thresholds (cash or otherwise) pinned to inflation or some kind of purchasing index? Do they all just tighten around our neck at ~3% year? I'm not cynical enough to assume this is by design, but perhaps am enough to think that once it's in there, the bug becomes a feature in the eyes of regulators.
In some cases not tying it to the CPI appears to be lack of foresight, in other cases it's a compromise, just like e.g. tax cuts that expire.
The party that wishes to not raise the threshold is hoping that they will have more political clout down the road, the party that does have power can conserve political capital and get a "win" in the eyes of their constituency.
I forget who said it, or I'd give them credit...
It is possible to use something like local bitcoins to exchange coins for cash, but it's extremely inconvenient and more expensive.
But could you flood the blockchain with bogus transactions, making it hard for everyone to use it?
I’m guessing they would prefer cash.
OK, I'll be going now.
The war against cash will end in tears, in my opinion. I simply don't know why everyone is running pell mell (and on HN - assisting in the building of) towards this cashless future where every single penny you spend is surveilled and gate-kept by multiple parties.
At least Bitcoin gave us a glimpse of hope for "Digital Cash" but of course is very unlikely to turn out that way (plus it's proven pseudonymous is not anonymous enough).
If fiat evolves to digital-only, Monero will be the only digital currency you can spend without having banks or payment processors know all of your personal, financial details.
However I don't think it's the final form. Some of the papers on tracking anonymous XMR transactions are a bit troubling, and I think there are some major scaling issues as well. Additionally all transactions must be anonymous or none are I think is a hard design goal.
I can't say I've had enough time to really research it though - I like the goals behind the project, but think the execution may need some work.
Check out https://getmonero.org/2017/04/19/an-unofficial-response-to-a...
I beg to differ. No cash means:
- kids will have even less opportunities to be kids. We are creating a word where they can't screw around. It's terrible for their growth.
- you have no workaround for any situation that doesn't fit the box perfectly. No way to speeds things up. Removing by passes mean a rigid and unforgivable system.
- you remove any possibility to try alternative systems, since by definition alternatives don't work in the way the current one does. Actually they often offend the current system. But you need those alternative to exists over-wise, you get stuck.
- of course, it also means morality is going to become law. Unable to hide, people leaving differently will be exposed.
- you'll get dependent on electronics. It means you need to have the privilege to have access to equipment and services otherwise you are excluded from society. Also in case of infrastructure failure, society is on hold.
This not a "little corner of privacy", it's "a huge part of what's allow us to function in this imperfect world".
An imperfect system needs workarounds. It's very important. Otherwise you'll get worst than a Gilliam's Brazil dystopia.
How is the screwing around related to cash? Can you elaborate?
> An imperfect system needs workarounds.
Can you give an example?
- The network connection is down or there's no cell reception for the credit card reader
- Your credit card/electronic payment got declined for some random reason
- You leave a Christmas tip in a box
- You have reasons for the transaction to be off the books
You can argue about any of these but certainly today, I've encountered at least these four situations within the past year.
Kids need to do forbidden things hidden from adults to grow. They need experiment. Make mistakes. Create their own set of values and ability to solve problem independently. Without cash, it increases the number of things they can't do without their parents. E.G: buying birth control, consuming illegal products, going out in places the parents disagree with, etc.
No parents are perfect. All of them are wrong on some things, and have some kind of unbalance in the way they interact with the children. It's life. Growing for kids mean learning from their parents, and learning to distance themself from their parents. Two sides of the same coin.
> An imperfect system needs workarounds.
Say you are in an saoudi dictatorship. Without cash, paying for drinks at a secret gay bar becomes very hard. It's the same for us. They are many things our system frown uppon. That doesn't mean it's bad.
Another thing: you are an administrator, and you know you can fix the school door now with cash and create a fake paper trail later. Or pay the right way and wait 6 months.
Obviously our system should be fixed. Cash is not the solution. But changing the system is a hard, long and unreliable process. So meanwhile, cash helps to get along.
I always had a debit card and bank account, and in my teens I withdrew cash and spent it. You are probably right that I would have thought twice about some of those spends if I knew my parents could see the transactions (which they would since I wasn't 18).
> Say you are in an saoudi dictatorship. Without cash, paying for drinks at a secret gay bar becomes very hard. It's the same for us.
Can't disagree here: eletronic money with a paper trail requires not just stable and trustworthy government and public institutions, it requires some trust also that future governments and institutions are trustworthy. The tradeoff between convenience and privacy is always a factor, and if lack of privacy is lack of security then the choice is clear.
I think the solution to many of these problems is simply "cash on card". You have a debit card connected to your bank account, but you can transfer a sum to "virtual cash" on the card. That then works like cash, but without the cash. It could be cryptographically based for example, and would mean the receiver of the transaction doeesn't see the source. And on a statement from the account it only shows up as the withdrawal when the e-cash was purchased.
They usually have VENMO, PAYPAL, and the CASH app.
I even met a beggar once who had a stripe terminal and could swipe your card.
Edit: Ok, actually the last one is a joke. But not the first 3.
I could see phone-to-phone contactless payment becoming commonplace in the same scenario.
In Canada, there is an oligopoly of banks, so they just agreed to force everyone to upgrade to Chip and PIN and/or Contactless.
http://time.com/money/5008950/bring-back-500-bill-cash-cashl...
All stores I have visited the last year accepted card or Swish but around 15 % of them did not accept cash. The argument is that cash is expensive to handle and it increases the risk of robbery.
I have only heard about some old people (bank trust issue) and people with economic problems (no credit card) that feel like this is a problem.
Where folks get confused is that it is a legal requirement for you to accept cash if I'm settling a debt with you. If you were to run up a $50 bill at the gas pump, then go in to pay with your $50 bill they'd be forced to accept it or let you walk. Trying to convince a cop of that may not be the easiest thing in the world though...
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages...
I'm used to the US pattern where businesses prefer cash, to the point of refusing to accept any cards at all, because processing fees cut into their margins.
OTOH they had a break-in and someone walked off with their safe that had like a week's worth of cash revenue in it. Almost put them under. You'd think they'd consider taking cards after that to reduce their risk, but nope.
It's beginning to happen in the US, too. One of my favorite restaurants, Sweetgreen, no longer accepts cash, and I'm boycotting them. I'd like the option to make an anonymous transaction, and I worry that we're entering an economy where those without access to banking services are excluded.
Those are also helpful for people who can't get bank accounts.
Is that a prepay restaurant? If the restaurant lets you pay after you finish eating, then by law (31 U.S. Code § 5103), cash is legal tender for settling your debt. However, the restaurant is not obligated to provide change if you do not present the exact amount due.
I do so few transactions offline that I just use cash for those few, low value, transactions. Since there are many places in the physical world that just take cash I might as well just use the one thing. I have a working debit card (the bank pretty much insists) but the added convenience isn't worth the low risk of getting it skimmed and the small loss of privacy.
Eventually we will have to start making a distinction between electronic cash and the physical kind. Cash is still a distinct sort of thing, no matter what physical form it takes.
I'm sure there are still cash booths yes, but they all take I-PASS now.
The toll roads in Illinois aren't actually cash-only. They just don't accept credit cards at the toll booth because of the long transaction times.
If you want to pay by credit card, just go through the toll booth. You get 7 days to pay via credit card or personal check with no penalty!
[1] https://www.illinoistollway.com/tolling-information/unpaid-t...
Interestingly enough you cannot pay cash or credit on some toll roads in southern California now. If you don't have one of those transponders, then you pay online, and they enforce with license plate scanners.
Target may know when someone is pregnant even before that person tells her own family.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
It might actually be faster to get cell phone networks back up than it is to get the infrastructure behind ATM's back (roads, people distributing money and so on). So until then, only the preppers with enough cash for a long period of time have cash. That said, if I lived in an area where there was any risk at all of flood, earthquake or tropical weather, I'd have a large wad of cash somewhere.