Bitcoin is a hedge against the cashless society
When cash is gone, where will you turn to transact with a basic level of privacy? What money do you hold when negative interest rates start eating away at your bank account?
The rise of digital payments and the move towards a cashless society are often seen as the same, but there is an important difference between them.
Digital payments like Paypal, Venmo, domestic-, and international bank transfers are convenient for people and businesses to transact with. They represent fintech innovation to consumers by the market. Faster, cheaper, and more efficient forms of digital payments are uncontroversial and largely an engineering and marketing challenge.
They don’t, however, remove every need for cash. Cash has unique properties that digital payments have not. As physical coins and notes, it can be exchanged peer-to-peer without a middleman. Its ownership is transferred simply by handing it over. The absence of an intermediary ensures that transfers are permissionless, censorship-resistant and, most importantly, private.
Digital payments solutions do not utilize physical cash but also do not prevent anyone from continuing to use cash…
