How Long It Will Be Before Our Society Becomes A Cashless One?

[HeHasRisen]

11 hours ago, Padders said:

Old speckled hen, 

4 bottles for 1 bit coin Thirsty..

Crypto currency will replace cash...get used to it..

If 4 bottles of that cost 1 Bitcoin I think we are all in trouble. The current value of 1BTC is £33,507 😅

[Padders]

2 minutes ago, HeHasRisen said:

If 4 bottles of that cost 1 Bitcoin I think we are all in trouble. The current value of 1BTC is £33,507 😅

  

Nice one HHR 

[Thirsty Relic]

3 hours ago, HeHasRisen said:

If 4 bottles of that cost 1 Bitcoin I think we are all in trouble. The current value of 1BTC is £33,507 😅

It's a good job that I've got a stock in then!

[The_DADDY]

And if it is, will it be a good thing?

 

https://fb.watch/god-P9olHR/

Edited October 26, 2022 by The_DADDY

[HeHasRisen]

GB News 😂😂

[Cody's Granddad]

I don't think it will become a totally cash free society, the older end still carry cash but I would guess 75 percent are cashless.

I don't carry cash myself unless I'm out on the road cycling to my favourite café stops  because some only take cash and some only take card and you don't really know until you arrive there.

I've been caught out a couple of times by not taking cash.

[Zinger549]

Well If GB News say it it must be true.  If the BBC or the Guardian did a report on it you'd say it was rubbish.

[ECCOnoob]

Hopefully yes. The quicker the better.

 

Coinage is annoying and bulky to carry to around.  Banknotes after a while in circulation are filthy, fondled by thousands of pairs of hands, stuffed in and out of sweaty pockets, sat on, farted on, stuffed into dirty wallets or handbags, lying around on all kinds of surfaces, held in many people's mouths.....  If that was any other kind of object being passed around so freely most people wouldn't touch it without a pair of rubber gloves and a bottle of disinfectant.

 

Cash of course is also a great expense to businesses in its processing,  secure storage and transportation.  For more than the cost of software which can tally everything up, allocate and redistribute at the click of a button.

 

Society has always been moving towards cashless for far longer than most people think. There is reference to an early version of cheques being used right back in Roman times, then came bills of exchange, and modern from cheques developed by the late 1700s.

 

Not forgetting a 'cash' banknote itself is nothing more than a promissory payment note tied to a specific commodity or currency set by the issuing bank.  If it wasn't for such a arrangement, the piece of paper that we preciously hold in our hands is actually in itself valueless.   

 

Even back in the black and white days when 'modern day' consumer banking first came on the scene, people were not using wads of cash to transfer between each other. They were using cheques, bankers drafts, bankers orders. Go look up some images from the 20s, 30s of early banking operations, rooms filled with clerks and typists all processing thousands of cashless transactions. 

 

After the cheques came the plastic cards initially with the fascinating imprinter machine and carbon chits, then electronic transactions with our scrawled signatures on the back of receipts, that evolved into chip and pin machines, then contactless cards and the latest versions of technology removing need for a physical card completely. 

 

Whichever tool is used, it is all doing the same thing.  Deducting an amount of value from one set of computerised figures and increasing value of a different set of computerised figures.  It really is as simple as that.

 

Do we really need to get our knickers in such a twist over the method of how that happens. I suspect most people really don't care.

 

I really don't get the paranoia and hysteria over this.  Nobody is keeping piles of money under their mattress. We all rely on banks at some form. I really don't care if my bank knows how many times I buy a Costa coffee each week or that Sainsbury's is tracking my groceries which I buy the same of every week anyway.  If someone was that desperate to find out my personal habits, they could do that anyway physically.

 

Yes we get targeted advertising, yes we get tracked which sets individual price points on the things we buy. But we all embrace the conveniences and benefits that comes with it.

 

All these features which are hysterically portrayed as invasions into our privacy,  in my opinion, are not so different to things which have come before. The targeted advertising all over the internet every time you click on a link is really not a million miles away from the piles of junk mail we used to receive through our doors everyday. The marketing lists, the community-based local adverts, the flyers being left on our car windscreens...

 

People complain about the amount of information when they sign up for online services but is that really any different to the days of going into a store and having to fill in forms to get HP, credit, club membership or special discount cards. It might have been on paper but it was still logged, reviewed then tracked the same as anything else.

 

Is customer profiling really a million miles apart from the days of being accosted by 1000 clipboard wielding market researchers every time you walked down the street or the days of the census takers knocking on everyone's doors...

 

As I say, I suspect the majority really don't care and are simply interested in maintaining their personalised discounts at their favourite stores and the convenience that comes with targeted online shopping.  If Mr Google knows what I want before I know what I want - is that  really something to be scared of or something we should instead be embracing as a sign of how far we have come and celebrating what we can achieve in technological advancement.

 

It really wasnt that long ago that the thought of a electronic brain that can calculate some simple mathematics was seen as witchcraft... now a cheap pocket calculator is seen as the absolute basic of basics, can be retailed at less than £1 and manufactured in some far eastern workshop for pennies.

Edited October 26, 2022 by ECCOnoob

[The_DADDY]

2 hours ago, Zinger549 said:

Well If GB News say it it must be true.  If the BBC or the Guardian did a report on it you'd say it was rubbish.

I've not said it's true. I asked a question .  

Clown.

[Zinger549]

Just now, The_DADDY said:

I've not said it's true. I asked a question .  

Clown.

You believe it though.  If Panorama did a program about it would you have the same view?