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Comment by 90002 | Hacker News Reader

It's incredible how ignorant some folks can be when it comes to why cash is still considered king today. For one, half of all small transactions (less than $50) are made in cash.

OH the other day in Palo Alto: "Cash will no longer be a thing in 5 years."

Sorry, we are still roughly 200 years away from achieving this authoritarian fantasy, if we are to consider the current rate of decline of payments made in cash. I wish folks would leave their suburban bubble for once and talk with real people across America, especially those living at the bottom of the pyramid.

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The interesting thing is, this has to be adopted internationally.

If RMB or Euros still exist in paper form, but the USD doesn't, or any combination thereof, the economies will quickly shift to taking foreign currency as a matter of course.

If you're selling tacos or hot dogs on a street corner, you're not really caring what kind of money you're taking in, as long as it's good and honored by the people you owe money to.

Obviously for large transactions, there will be currency controls (and there already are). But for small day to day stuff? Like restaurants and dealing with food suppliers? Or hell, even hiring the neighbor's kid to shovel out snow or mow your lawn.

As long as there's some form of cash, that's what they'll use.

In the Netherlands, I use cash for none of those. Well, for young kids. And _some_ street corner food, rarely.

The thing is that once almost everything is cashless, using cash for something becomes a burden. You need to get some from an ATM, pay with it, then you have change to carry with you. I don't have a wallet with space for cash anymore, so it's loose change in pocket, that I probably won't use for weeks. If there is a food stall around that does take cards, I go there.

In fact I'd probably do a bank transfer to the kid's father's account, and let them settle it with the kid's allowance or so.

Sure. In the US, at least where I live, a lot of smaller restaurants don't take cards, as well as a lot of smaller non-chain neighborhood bars.

If you're paying cashless, the credit card processor and company is skimming a small percentage off the tips. With the razor margins in the hospitality/food industry, that 3% adds up to maybe your entire profit margin.

In the Netherlands credit cards also take a percentage like that, and that's why they're not accepted everywhere.

But Maestro and VPAY debit cards have a flat fee of something like 5 cents per transaction, less if your company does many.

if we are to consider the current rate of decline of payments made in cash

And why would we do that, in this age of technological acceleration?

Technology will continue to have a material impact on the amount of cash in circulation, of course. The evolution of money is fascinating to watch, though I believe it is important to consider that not everyone will be able to participate in this fantasy we dream of.

Open-loop prepaid cards have helped eliminate paper transfer channels to a degree (which is a positive step in the right direction) but we cannot ignore the 2.5B people on this planet who do not have access to modern financial services at all. For the rural farmer in Southeast Asia, cash is all he/she knows.

Only if you consider cryptocurrency "cash". Otherwise, plenty of people are already living exclusively on bitcoin today with many benefits and few of the scare mongering issues. I can't imagine the masses are still 2 whole generations from catching up, I'd think about 10 years would be enough.

Isn't bitcoin limited to 10 transactions a second, roughly?

We're hitting some real limitations with cryptocurrency, if the second gen ones are better, good on them, let me know.

If I'm trying to pay for breakfast in a jook shop in Hong Kong, you better believe that it's going to be cash, not something the shop owner has to get online to accept.

> Otherwise, plenty of people are already living exclusively on bitcoin today

Citation needed? This seems hard to believe unless "plenty of people" is in the ballpark of maybe a dozen.

Bitcoin has exactly the same problems as any other cashless interaction.

It's where my money is, but it's not the next cash.

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