Posted on 04/02/2014 9:14:27 AM PDT by Star Traveler
Imagine it’s 2040.
You go to the grocery store, and when you look for the checkout counter there is none. There’s no place to pay for your groceries because you already did.
When you walked into the store, a sensor identified you, perhaps from a ring or watch you were wearing that transmitted the information. Or perhaps you didn’t need to wear anything special. Maybe a device in the store figured out who you were using a combination of facial recognition, 3-D body shape identification and your gait.
Your unique identifier is attached to your digital wallet, which transmits payment for the groceries directly to the store. But you don’t pay in dollars. Your wallet has a dozen digital currencies in it, all with different values based on a variety of factors, including loyalty programs. At certain stores, you might pay with their version of frequent-flier miles. At others, you might pay with the equivalent of a virtual credit card — except the credit card isn’t issued by a traditional bank.
You might also pay with credit that you received through a peer-to-peer online exchange that connects investors with people seeking short- and long-term loans. That’s how you got your mortgage and financed your self-driving car, too.
(Excerpt) Read more at dealbook.nytimes.com ...
I see Bitcoin as one might look at a stock...it’s temporary.
Decentralization will make tracing anyone impossible. Your transactions will be distributed as well as merchants receiving payments. These platforms are all being funded and realized as we type. I don’t buy into the gloom and doom what so ever.
The Controllers will be kicking and screaming and threatening but there is not a damn thing they can do about it now but huff and puff.
Don’t hate to tell, tell me more! I don’t read newspapers anymore but someone told me at work today that Bitcoin was mentioned in a comic strip.
Baseball, apple pie and Bitcoin.I left out Chevy for obvious reasons.
Bitcoin is ubiquitous and it is a wonderful thing to behold.
I pick up quite a few articles that I post here from Drudge ... and about other subjects, too. It’s a good place to start with the news.
The time between now and the 2040 of this article is much shorter than between now and the first time I heard we were going to become a cashless society. There are really only “good” reasons for going cashless if you’re the government, cash is expensive to produce, can be counterfeited, and is largely untraceable. For everybody that isn’t the government though it has a few big wins: fast, easy, and largely untraceable. Or on the consumerist side the reasons we use cash are: illegal things, small things, vending machines, bars, and yard sales. Nothing works better for those types of transactions than cash, and most of us participate in at least two of them on a fairly regular basis.
Now it’s possible the government will decide to stop giving in to our demands. But as long as they decide to be at least a little user friendly cash is staying until somebody comes up with something at least as fast, at least as easy AND at least as untraceable. Those chits I mentioned earlier would be about the only thing I can see doing it, but much like the RFID credit card in the RFID grocery store Visa commercial the logistical challenges for something like those chits are epic. You’d need them to be able to talk to all the banks, through all the ATMs, and all the computers, and all the smartphones, and all the cash registers, and they need to talk to all of each other (without having to talk to banks), and people will want to be able to add some security, but they’re also going to want to be able to ignore the security. All of it is technically solvable, even just with the tech we have now, but the solutions aren’t practical and simple enough for it to happen now.
So I stay quite confident in my idea that as long as the government remains a little user friendly there will be cash when you and I die. And even if the government stops private citizens will find a way to keep cash alive at least in the black market. It solves too many problems too much better than the alternatives.
Next monetary revolution..... 666
Bitcoins aren’t that ubiquitous. Half the people I work with (in the software business) have never even heard of them. There’s a subsection where anti-government control types intersect with nerdy internet types that know about them, outside of that group though nobody cares.
I just about use no cash right now. Almost everything is done by pushing around electrons. Of course, if I wanted to get cash and do it all that way, I could still do it, but that would be a lot more trouble for me. I would imagine there is a great number who are like me.
What’s going to happen is that there is going to be a “tipping point” and things will shift real fast at that tipping point. One can’t predict those kinds of things, as they just come out of the blue, but that’s how some things change and change really fast. I believe the change will come about as a “tipping point” issue and then it will happen virtually overnight.
But, all the talk about how long such a thing could be or will be before it happens reminds me of the child always asking, “Are we there yet?!”
It gets old after a while, because you know that we’re getting closer and closer to the destination - all while the question keeps coming up again and again.
AND THEN ... all of a sudden ... we reach the destination.
That’s a definite “tipping point” to make things happen virtually overnight.
Well, there are definitely some non-Geeks and non-nerds in my family ... and yet they know about Bitcoin.
Operative term there: just about. I’ve got a monday dinner at a bar where I use cash, a thursday lunch, and the concession counter at the movie theater, plus the random under $10 purchase. That’s pretty much it, but that’s all it takes to make sure I always have cash on me. There might be a great number like you, but if there’s one thing to learn from how the entertainment industry has fractured it’s that in a nation of 311 million it doesn’t take many to be many. There’s still clearly a strong demand for cash even if you don’t count the people buying drugs.
It’s not going to be a tipping point, it’s going to be a killer app. Somebody will finally come up with a method of storing and distributing money that achieves what cash does. It’s easy to spot it, just ask yourself: is this method of payment fast and easy enough that if you had all payment options available to you you’d use this one to buy a soda at a convenience store? If the answer is yes that’s the one that replaces cash. If the answer is no cash lives another day.
Or the government says “screw you guys” and stops printing the stuff.
Sure, it’s “just about” right now, when it wasn’t that way not so long ago. It’s the “movement” and the direction of the movement.
Problem is it’s been “just about” since the mid-70s and really the last big step we took towards it was internet commerce which makes us buy a lot less in person. Prior to then it was debit cards. And this bitcoin idea is really nothing more than enhancing those, it’s either good for e-commerce or can be used like a debit card. If neither of those could get rid of cash the same with bitcoins ain’t gonna do it.
I see things a whole lot different than the 70s. I remember that time and it’s nothing like it is for today, in terms of cash. The internet and the web made a real big difference there, too.
Within a year, all the cards that people use are going to a sign-less and pin-less transaction and all the vendors will be changing their machines. It will be a slide in and out, and the transaction is done, without any further action on your part.
No, things are way, way different now.
The difference from the 70s is 3 steps, fairly sizable steps but still 3 steps: credit cards became more ubiquitous, debit cards were invented, e-commerce became a thing. Each of these moved us away from cash some, but none of them are really good for the things I listed previously.
No way we’re going sign-less and pin-less within a year. You’re forgetting it’s a big country, phase in take longer than that, and there’s the problem of trust. With situations like what happened at Target people want MORE security on their cards not less. There’s a reason that Visa commercial is like 5 years old and still hasn’t happened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXm6py-T2dU
You mean just like the dollar when the USA goes bankrupt? Oh, wait a minute, it’s bankrupt already ... :-) ...
I guess that’s going to happen any day now.
I’m just talking about what was in the news recently. I didn’t make that up and it’s not some kind of “projection” on my part. I’ll see if I can find the article again.
And ... again ... I said that’s where we’re at today and that it’s the “direction” that it’s going and the “movement” involved. It’s actually in the process (and has been) as we speak.
Doesn’t matter who’s making the prediction, it’ll pan out just as well as predictions of a paperless office. I actually see the card industry moving AWAY from no-sign no-pin, my gas credit cards used to be all no-nos now they all want me to enter my zip which is basically a pin.
Okay, this isn’t the actual article I saw, but it covers what I remember about it. All the card companies are moving over to it and then they’re going to force the merchants to upgrade their equipment nor they will be liable for any potential losses (as I remember it) ...
EMV to the rescue?
Even if the millions of consumers burned in the most recent rash of breaches start clamoring for EMV cards, those cards will offer no extra defense unless retailers update their equipment. That will cost merchants money, but the card networks (Visa, MasterCard, AmEx and Discover) are giving both them and card-issuing banks an incentive to upgrade by October 2015.
At that point, the networks will institute a “fraud liability shift.” That’s a fancy way of saying “adapt or pay.” If a consumer’s card is involved in fraud, whichever party involved in the transaction (the bank that issued the card or the merchant that accepted it) that didn’t upgrade to EMV will be held accountable.
Although everyone has until 2015 to upgrade, quite a few financial institutions are already rolling out EMV cards. Given the prevalence of EMV throughout the world, banks have realized that smart cards are a travel benefit that can be touted, just like travel insurance and no foreign transaction fees. Many of the major issuers have them, as well as some credit unions (including Pentagon Federal, State Department Federal and Andrews Federal).
Where can I get one in 2014?
Use the chart below to find out which issuers are providing EMV chip cards for Americans. This list is periodically updated as new cards come onto the market. Please note that technically speaking, most of the cards issued in the US are chip and signature. That being said, these signature-based EMV chips will still work with most international merchants. If your card is in the chart, but doesn’t have a chip, you can request a new one from your issuer.
http://creditcardforum.com/blog/chip-and-pin-credit-cards-usa/
We’re switching over - and progressing along the pathway to the future ... :-) ...
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