Killing off cash: Could new tech mean the end of money?
Cash has been taking a beating lately.
Last week, Canada minted its last penny. Eurozone countries are working to restrict cash payments. Bitcoin is all the rage. Payments start-ups such as Square and iZettle are on a cash-killing mission, while non-profit organisations, governments, the World Bank, small businesses, multinational corporations, app developers, hippies, libertarians, liberals, right-wingers all have agendas that can be advanced by alternatives to cash, and they're all pushing to bring them about.
But like forecasts of flying cars, predictions of a cashless future have a history of failure.
This is in part because progress is incremental, and in part because physical money is a time-tested technology.
It's fast, widely accepted, anonymous and useful for old-school budgeting and when the power goes out.
Yet powerful forces are aligning against cash.
Together, they provide a glimpse of what a cashless or mostly cashless future might look like, and illuminate the promise of digital money, irrespective of whether cash is ever kaput or just increasingly marginalised.
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But gold is not value incarnate. It's just another commodity, albeit a historically pivotal and impressively hefty one.
Those who grasp that fact, yet still distrust central bank-issued currencies, are turning to local and online options, barter exchanges, and the crypto-currency Bitcoin.
Full Article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21427472
