Predicting the future with 100% accuracy is difficult. It’s unknowable if physical money will completely disappear.
The one thing I hold as an absolute constant, is humans are adaptable, humans will trade and use whatever they can, whatever is convenient, to their advantage.
Can you trade today, gold for a donut? Yes, but you’re going to put a lot of effort into that trade, just to find a counterparty. And then for the counterparty to verify it’s actually gold etc etc but you can do it.
Fascist governments like the centralized power, and that includes centralizing money, including peer-to-peer exchanges. So there’s always going to be the urge to control the absolute flow of all money. That being said, not every government has perfect cell phone coverage over their whole and nation, not all of their people have phones, not all of those phones are always on the network. The one thing money needs to do is work even offline.
It’d be a very idiotic move, in my opinion but the push towards contactless payment methods seem to be the way banks and payment services are wanting to push society.
I’m hoping for a future without money. Where everyone can get what they need and want.
Star Trek or Hunger Games. Right now the safe money’s on the latter.
What about those that want more than they need? Like the greed for money translates to your purchasing power and how much you can get of what you want.
So say someone works overtime, gets more money and can buy more things.
In a world where there’s no money, how does that individual get more of what they want?
Imagine if you can
Imagine there’s no heaven
There are lots of reasons why governments might desire to get rid of physical currency.
-
Crime - Physical money is the option of choice for criminals as it allows them to make off-record transactions so their activities are hard to trace
-
Tax - When otherwise legal business is conducted in cash, it’s possible for business income or employee pay to be undeclared or underreported, meaning the government is losing out on tax revenue. This is huge, and the gov really wants their slice of that cash.
-
Manufacturing and distribution - A minor point, but it is expensive to make physical currency, as well as to keep improving it to prevent forgeries and such. Getting rid of physical currency removes this problem.
I’m sure there are other reasons but those are what came to mind.
Despite these factors, any move to a fully cashless society is controversial, because not everyone is in a position where being fully digital is feasible. It has the worst effects on those who are already marginalised and disadvantaged in society, like the homeless, who may not even be able to open a bank account.
So I think it will be quite a long time until it might happen.
-
