Why we should fear a cashless world

[Seram1]

If there is no money in the world.
Then there is nothing rich and poor.
And if in the world there is no money mankind will be lazy to pursue his dreams

[Hatuferu]

If there is no money in the world.
Then there is nothing rich and poor.
And if in the world there is no money mankind will be lazy to pursue his dreams

You don't get what the topic is, cashless does not mean no money it means everything will be done through online transaction
and bitcoin could be the leading currency for online transaction. The means to transact is always important so it will not be eliminated
whatever it is.

[gracia0023]

There are pros and cons of a cashless world.  I believe that one of its positive side is, wherever you go and whatever country you will visit, you don't have to look for a money changer because you can do whatever transaction and pay the bills via online.  On the other hand, poor people will not be benefited.  Many people around the world is still ignorant on how to use technology as part of their daily lives, there are still many people that cannot afford to buy laptop, computers and the like gadgets and do not even know how to use it, so how they can do transaction via online if they do not even know what online means?.  Without cash, It is possible that many people will use the ancient way of exchanging goods "barter" as a way of transactions.  The problem with this is the exact value of goods cannot be determined and that is one thing that we should fear of.  

[Ziskinberg]

There are pros and cons of a cashless world.  I believe that one of its positive side is, wherever you go and whatever country you will visit, you don't have to look for a money changer because you can do whatever transaction and pay the bills via online.  On the other hand, poor people will not be benefited.  Many people around the world is still ignorant on how to use technology as part of their daily lives.  Without cash, It is possible that many people will use the ancient way of exchanging goods "barter" as a way of transactions.  The problem with this is the exact value of goods cannot be determined and that is one thing that we should fear of. 

Cashless world is not good for everyone, the reason we have variety of choices as a tool for our transaction is because the government will have to serve all the interest of the people. It's a big population and divided with different level of education, some maybe comfortable with transacting online but it's a headache for some and I'm sure the majority of people.

[thymeow]

Cashless society is actually a good idea thought it has its advantages and disadvantages obviously - one benefit of cashless economy is that it is easier to track the black money and illegal transactions because if cash is used directly for doing transactions than it is not easy to track the transactions as the money does not come into the banking system however in case of digital transactions it is easy to track the transaction as all records are there with the banks which result in more transparent transactions which in turn leads to fall in corruption in the economy of the country. Another advantage of cashless economy is that since all transactions will be done through organized channel that is through banks and financial institutions it results in increase in tax revenue for the government as all cash transactions which were done illegally come into banking system which in turn helps the government in tracking all transactions and levying tax on them which in turn can be used by the government for betterment of economy of the country. Disadvantage of the cashless economy is that although it easy to do digital transactions but at the same time it is very risky as compared to cash related transactions. Hence people having half knowledge of digital payments are exposed to cyber fraud and losing their hard earned money to online scam and hacking of bank accounts and hence it is better to do cash transactions rather than doing digital transactions if one is not fully aware of the online medium of transactions.

[Idrisu]

Poor people and small businesses rely on cash. A contactless system will likely entrench poverty and pave the way for terrifying levels of surveillance

http://www.theguardian.com/money/commentisfree/2016/mar/21/fear-cashless-world-contactless

Discussion

poor people will actually need cash to do transactions but we cannot remaining in that level if humanity most advanced in it journey of life. Cash courses inflation and most of the people suffered from the infect of inflation are poor people. Cash most be destroyed for us to progress.

[kryptqnick]

"In a world without cash, every payment you make will be traceable." - this is half-true. For instance, via btc wallets every transaction is traceable but, as nobody knows the owners of wallets, malicious governments can do nothing about it.
"Cash, on the other hand, empowers its users." - Well, this is quite true, because when you have the money for real - you know you can use it any time you'd like, whereas some bank or currency might end up crashed. Fiat also crashed sometimes, though.
I think we shouldn't fear the cashless world, because there will never be one. There are too many people who like to keep it old-school and they won't allow fiat to disappear. On the other hand, I guess the same article could be written about fearing the world with cash in barter times. Real fruit, milk and cows empower people. They know they can use it to eat + they are likely to exchange it with something else like flour. As for cash, the government controls it and at any moment you can end up having tons of worthless paper.

[HongKong]

Cashless society is actually a good idea thought it has its advantages and disadvantages obviously - one benefit of cashless economy is that it is easier to track the black money and illegal transactions because if cash is used directly for doing transactions than it is not easy to track the transactions as the money does not come into the banking system however in case of digital transactions it is easy to track the transaction as all records are there with the banks which result in more transparent transactions which in turn leads to fall in corruption in the economy of the country. Another advantage of cashless economy is that since all transactions will be done through organized channel that is through banks and financial institutions it results in increase in tax revenue for the government as all cash transactions which were done illegally come into banking system which in turn helps the government in tracking all transactions and levying tax on them which in turn can be used by the government for betterment of economy of the country. Disadvantage of the cashless economy is that although it easy to do digital transactions but at the same time it is very risky as compared to cash related transactions. Hence people having half knowledge of digital payments are exposed to cyber fraud and losing their hard earned money to online scam and hacking of bank accounts and hence it is better to do cash transactions rather than doing digital transactions if one is not fully aware of the online medium of transactions.

That's the whole point of Blockchain though, the whole anonymous payments is not going to work so much with Bitcoin unless they have an Altcoin though the transactions are usually recorded and someone could find the transaction if they have the timestamp's for the payments.

A cashless society is going to allow bankers and other companies that deal with money to make as much money as they want.

[aesma]

Maybe at some point governments will tell us that up to some amount, we can spend money without the government knowing it, and above that, they want to know and will punish people who hide it.

In a way it's already the case in my country (France), cash transactions are restricted to less than 1000€. You can go above but it is illegal. Honeypots are not really a thing practiced by our cops though, so I wouldn't fear buying or selling some BTC (at least I would not fear the cops).

[cafucafucafu]

Poor people and small businesses rely on cash. A contactless system will likely entrench poverty and pave the way for terrifying levels of surveillance

http://www.theguardian.com/money/commentisfree/2016/mar/21/fear-cashless-world-contactless

Discussion

Even though the aspect of a cashless society seems to be extremely appealing to some people I would argue like the article says that a cashless world isn't a utopia at all. In fact, the government would be able to see through all our history, everything that we do. The little privacy that we had left with cash would be completely gone as well. The US senate had a bill that suggested gift cards and cash to be regulated as well, which is completely absurd imo. Is this really the free country that the founders of the country worked so hard for?

But cryptocurrencies if they gain mass adoption would be a way of keeping the privacy of cash based payment systems whilst still having a cashless society. Even satoshi called it an "digital cash system". If we can get merchants to accept BTC this wouldn't be as impossible as people think.

[hurain]

There are pros and cons of a cashless world.  I believe that one of its positive side is, wherever you go and whatever country you will visit, you don't have to look for a money changer because you can do whatever transaction and pay the bills via online.  On the other hand, poor people will not be benefited.  Many people around the world is still ignorant on how to use technology as part of their daily lives.  Without cash, It is possible that many people will use the ancient way of exchanging goods "barter" as a way of transactions.  The problem with this is the exact value of goods cannot be determined and that is one thing that we should fear of. 

Cashless world is not good for everyone, the reason we have variety of choices as a tool for our transaction is because the government will have to serve all the interest of the people. It's a big population and divided with different level of education, some maybe comfortable with transacting online but it's a headache for some and I'm sure the majority of people.

yes currently it may not be good but w can expect that with the passage of time when bitcoin will become more popular and when all the people of the world will start using bitcoin then it will become easy to live in a cashless world.

[syaripudin]

A very large turnover of money, one of which occurs in the middle to lower class, this causes that the lower middle class has a huge share in the velocity of money around the world, then what will happen if the money just disappear, of course, the economy will not turn Smoothly, because the middle to lower still rely on money for the tool of transactions, so I think for until now the money still has a very important role in the global economy

[Xenophoto]

I'm afraid but the world will have absolute no privacy at all. You bought condoms for your gf, the government knows. You bought tons of chocolates every week, the government knows that you are diabetic. What's even worse is when there's a public ledger of all these. Sure there's transparency going on but that transparency is rather an invasion of our privacy.

It would also be a part of the government's punishments. If you were reported to commit a crime, the government will freeze the account. A huge portion of the cashless society will rely on bitcoins instead where their transaction is not known by the government.

There will be a lot of difference. There will be people selling their accounts to other people for the sole purpose of having privacy for the things that they want to be recorded under their names.

[Chin Cheng]

If there is no money in the world.
Then there is nothing rich and poor.
And if in the world there is no money mankind will be lazy to pursue his dreams

There was a time in history when mankind survived because of agriculture and hunting,money was not a concern back then because it was not invented,so what are you talking about here,if there is no money people will be lazy,just check the reality when you say something without any substance. I am against a cashless society because it is not possible in a short amount of time,you might need centuries to fully implement something like that of a change.

[CyberKuro]

Well in case some didn't knew, Sweden was the first cashless country since past 4 or 5 months (IIRC) and they haven't suffer any problem so far and the route for other countries is surely the same, it's just the matter of when it will happen. Some say cash is good and they could leave without the need of other monetary systems like credit/debit which is connected to banks and online options like BTCitcoin. We can't hold too much of cash at our hand or disposal but we could have them saved on either banks or in our BTCitcoin wallets (no matter how large the amount). Some sited that the poor people would be the ones who will suffer the most for this evolution but surely there will be a way for them as well although it's not going to be a smooth one. We never know, maybe in the near future, every single person will have a single card (regardless of being rich or poor) and all their wealth automatically stores there (still long way though) or even some sort of genetics wallet, connected to someones genes only.

It seems like what happens in some movies a genetic wallet, printed on human body. Maybe it could happen in the future, maybe not, as people do enjoy using cash and cashless society has several worse scenario as it's digital and could be freezed at any time if govs want to. Feels like we don't have power to control our own money.

[Vikingr]

I hope for a future that in that time even the poor people and the small businesses will also rely on digital system and for them it will not be impossible to adopt this system. We can see that before bitcoin only rich people were the traders but now even poor people can trade so in the past poor businesses will also get benefits.

[angaper]

Governments, as always, trying to convince us that fiat money is the best option to handle our finances because they know that otherwise they would not be able to collect the taxes they so badly need. But fortunately in this crypto world we are beginning to wake up and we no longer believe that old lie. And it seems that we are getting closer to convince the world about the importance of not leaving our economy in the hands of centralist governments.

[TastyChillySauce00]

I hope for a future that in that time even the poor people and the small businesses will also rely on digital system and for them it will not be impossible to adopt this system. We can see that before bitcoin only rich people were the traders but now even poor people can trade so in the past poor businesses will also get benefits.

seeing from the fee, taxes, and etc. Those poor who do trades seem to have a really low profit because all of the profit already deducted to pay these things. The rich don't have a problem with this matter as their earning is overwhelmingly high but those poor really struggling, even they can't buy a full coin of ETH, what do you expect? The poor don't really benefit from this activities, instead, they'll seek another chance of earning huge amount of money.

[Anegg]

Poor people and small businesses rely on cash. A contactless system will likely entrench poverty and pave the way for terrifying levels of surveillance

http://www.theguardian.com/money/commentisfree/2016/mar/21/fear-cashless-world-contactless

Discussion

A cardless society will suck since there is a restaurant that I go to sometimes which is solely reliant on cash, also a cashless society would be solely controlled by the bank so if you had a bad credit history, you couldn't even buy groceries. Everyone would be controlled by the banks and everyone could be manipulated

[Sled]

Because it is dangerous for us and we all know that nothing is safe in the internet so if we will just depend on the digital age then we will have risk in managing our money and also the security of our money is not that safe because there is a lot of professional hackers that can bypass and steal money from the innocent user of digital money so it is just right to be afraid in a cashless world.