
The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it - leejo
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/19/cashless-society-con-big-finance-banks-closing-atms
======
unstatusthequo
If only we had a decentralized distributed network for peer to peer payments
that avoided banks and allowed for verified transactions of value amongst
distrusting parties.

~~~
Spivak
Cryptocurrencies solve a problem that people don't really have -- namely that
trust is in short supply. So even if some cryptocurrency was popular we would
wind up right back we are because of the same market forces that brought us
here the first time. Cash that you can send over the internet was never
something people really needed or wanted.

* People won't want to actually manage their wallet and risk losing all their money and FDIC carries real tangible value so individuals won't have wallets, they'll have an account with a bank. And because nobody -- not you, not your bank wants to pay transaction fees all intra-bank transactions will be done off-chain.

* And there's never been a problem with intra-bank trust so transactions between banks will also naturally be off-chain with some trusted intermediary so all banks would have is an account with that intermediary.

* But how do people with bank accounts actually do day to day transactions? Banks could have a system where users have a local wallet that the bank xfers down and then performs a real crypto transaction with the other party and then back up to their bank -- but 3 rounds of fees just to buy a coffee? Some trendy start-up will emerge to do all these transactions off-chain for pennies.

* And then you run into the same problem with credit cards where you essentially need virtual accounts with unspecified amounts in them and if you actually try to do transactions like this on-chain you spend a lot of money in fees just to move money between the wallets of trusted parties.

So we'll wind up heading toward a cryptoless society for all the same reasons
we're headed toward a cashless one now.

~~~
Fjolsvith
I accept crypto on my shed business website. I can take the crypto to my
lumber yard and buy materials.

Crypto is catching on.

~~~
Spivak
I don't disagree, crypto functions reasonably well as a direct replacement for
cash. But for the same reasons people don't carry cash they won't want to
carry crypto either. Crypto can become completely mainstream and not change
anything about how banks and payment processors function.

------
UnderProtest
“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the
people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions
were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with
the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the
whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

Moving the actual pieces of paper around is more expensive than moving bits
around. This should be obvious. Sometimes you're paying an armored truck to
move cash or somebody to count it. Other times you're accepting that tonight's
deposit was stolen from you on the way to the bank.

I'm all for physical currency and we should vote and campaign to keep that
part of our financial system but this isn't a conspiracy. Cashless will out-
compete cash almost every time. The only exceptions are local businesses
trying to avoid taxes.

------
fsloth
An excellent article, especially given the analysis of the social engineering
tools used against the general public.

Sadly, I'm certain it will be read like as a too academical alarmist piece and
forgotten soon.

