> Let me ask you why do you use cash? For anything? Is it for?
In areas that are ahead in digital payments technologies, cash is dying out very fast.
In the US, you may want to use cash (as a seller) to avoid transaction fees. But in countries like Norway that has implemented a cheap national debit payment system (BankAxept), that's not been a big issue. Now the banks in Norway has implemented a common payment app as well (Vipps), which is free for transactions between individuals.. this has started to kill off cash in all the areas it held out before (sales of used items, buying cookies from scouts, etc)
> What with what? PayPal? There have been no alternatives, or equivalent to cash in the electronic age to date.
If you ask me, that's because making payment systems is actually extremely hard. It's just that cryptocurrencies pretend it's not, by simply ignoring a whole lot of real-world issues that you would address if you were making a payment system that wasn't trying to make blockchains fit the problem.
Most of the challenges with payment systems are social. Challenges related to what happens if there's an error, a scam, a theft, etc. Cryptocurrencies just avoid it all by saying there is never any errors, even when any reasonable person would say there is.
If you think there's no alternatives, I'd say you're very US-centric. Outside the US there are lots of places that are already most of the way there.
In areas that are ahead in digital payments technologies, cash is dying out very fast.
In the US, you may want to use cash (as a seller) to avoid transaction fees. But in countries like Norway that has implemented a cheap national debit payment system (BankAxept), that's not been a big issue. Now the banks in Norway has implemented a common payment app as well (Vipps), which is free for transactions between individuals.. this has started to kill off cash in all the areas it held out before (sales of used items, buying cookies from scouts, etc)
> What with what? PayPal? There have been no alternatives, or equivalent to cash in the electronic age to date.
If you ask me, that's because making payment systems is actually extremely hard. It's just that cryptocurrencies pretend it's not, by simply ignoring a whole lot of real-world issues that you would address if you were making a payment system that wasn't trying to make blockchains fit the problem.
Most of the challenges with payment systems are social. Challenges related to what happens if there's an error, a scam, a theft, etc. Cryptocurrencies just avoid it all by saying there is never any errors, even when any reasonable person would say there is.
If you think there's no alternatives, I'd say you're very US-centric. Outside the US there are lots of places that are already most of the way there.