Topic: Disappearance of cash and bitcoin as an alternative? (Read 333 times)

It is really hard to take place. Recently came across a statement where it was mentioned, more than 2 billion people still unbanked. When will these people get educated to use money, then the card transaction, then the online transaction and further move to cryptocurrency usage. Not gonna happen anytime soon. Cryptocurrency have already serving as an alternate to the traditional fiat, but this had been happening within specific percentage of people. The same to grow little by little and make the cash disappear won't happen forever.

For Bitcoin to become a viable alternative, it needs to overcome three major obstacles.

First it must solve its technical limitations. Transaction capacity, fees, wallet management. Lightning network solves some of the problems, though even it can't provide the transaction capacity level necessary for global scale, because mainnet will still be limited, and you need it to open channels.

Then the second problem is price volatility. There's no mechanism that says more adoption brings down volatility. It's unclear how volatility will Bitcoin be in the future.

Third problem is simply convincing the people to switch to Bitcoin. Even if the first two obstacles are removed, the people might just keep ignoring Bitcoin, because they are satisfied with banks and fiat and don't feel the pressure to change their way of handling money.

We're done with the covid issue and if not, things are way better now. If this is the only reason you see to why Bitcoin would be an alternative mode of pyment, then it's a no. First of all there are fiat based digital currencies which are more supported by different countries because they can regulate it unlike with cryptocurrencies. In the future, I believe that this technology would be acknowledged by more countries as an alternative payment but it'll be a long progress before such thing happen given that there are still issues being considered to do so, at the present.
Coexistence is more likely and more possible to happen if things would go smoothly for this industry.Some banks are now giving opportunities and consideration to this blockchain so I guess things aare still improving for this industry.

I can fully understand that it's more difficult for an older person to learn bitcoin (even if it depends on their upbringing, alertness and curiosity. Some people are older at the age of 40. Some others at the age of 90 ...), but for children I really don't see any problem. Children learn quickly and it's common for them, for example, to speak several languages from an early age, especially if they come from mixed couples or were born in polyglot countries.

We shouldn't underestimate children's capacity to learn. When they don't learn at school, it's sometimes because they're bored and the lessons aren't lively. It's up to adults to make learning fun.

As for me, my two children quickly learned to use my bank card. 

The history of currency system have been changed several times and now we are used to use cash. So in future gradually it will change and will be invented a new currency system and it's pretty much sure. Now people are showing interest in Digital Virtual Currency. And many people now don't like to carry cash even it's more insecure. So in near future The popularity and usecases of Cash will gradually be decreased.

Bitcoin can be a perfect alternative of Cash as it's much secure, Decentralized and easy to make transections and anonymous. But some limitations are the main problem for mass adoption of Bitcoin. But Bitcoin has some limitations like it isn't suitable for kids and old people and it can't be used without internet.
So it will be a perfect alternative of Cash in many terms but cannot fulfill every requirements because of it's limitations.

 

This will happen after 100 Years for Sure. In every country there's always a place where cash/fiat never dies - Public Market, Transportation etc etc. Venezuelan Bolivares is a living Testimony of a corrupt government, and a country without cash will just be an Imagination. Bitcoin would be nothing without cash.

Many people are familiar with bitcoin and the percentage of bitcoin adoption as an investment is also increasing, bitcoin is not yet generally used as a transaction tool such as fiat because there are still many countries that do not provide a place to buy something using bitcoin and the rules still limit it. Nothing is impossible in the future and bitcoin will become a legal tender, but its nature is not used worldwide.

If the question is about the advantages of using crypto technology and blockchain I agree there are many advantages, but awareness of security, risk and knowledge is the basis that can lead people to understand this system much better. It takes a long process to achieve the expectations we want and I don't think it will be in the near future.

Bitcoin will always be an alternative to cash even in the future. The cash that we have right now will stay just like Bitcoin will stay. And for sure in the future, there will be a lot of alternatives besides cash, not only Bitcoin.
I am not saying Bitcoin is bad but that's what I can see because in some cases, there are people who don't want to use Bitcoin and are not comfortable with it.

It's very early to think on this because the majority of world population still didn't heard about Bitcoin and the Percentage of people that used Bitcoin at least one time still very low, but im too confident about the future of Bitcoin as a kind of payment but we must first increase crypto adoption and teach people about the adventages of using crypto and Blokchain technology

The question shouldn't be can bircoin be an alternative?
Rather of should be.
How has Bitcoin performed as an alternative to cash during the pandemic and social distancing era?
This why another contributor will indeed have something to write on because, since bitcoin's creation, bitcoin has been an alternative currency that is performing incredibly within its limits as a decentralized currency.


So at this point, we have moved way above the point where we talk about Bitcoin's possibility to be an alternative to fiat, and since Bitcoin is anti-inflationary it's now very ok to stake it clearly to know the real status of Bitcoin against the fiat paper money like the US dollars.

what am looking at this situation here is that we should be grateful that bitcoin was created. it can exist harmoniously with fiat. and fiat won't go away anytime soon. there are so many financial activities that we are still relying on with fiat. just use both and take advantage of the opportunity that they offer to us.
i don't think we will see the disappearance of cash in our lifetime. but i can agree that the use of digital cash is growing these days, especially when pandemic hit the world.

A 'Britcoin' has been proposed for the UK by both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, therefore who knows.

I think that cash or at least a physical token for 'bartering' at the very, very least will always be here - especially if Sergei presses the 'shut all the digital terminals off' button from his home computer in Russia.

Having seen people go nuts when App and Card terminals go down, cash will always have its place whether people like it or not.

There's room for App, Card, Cash/Physical Token and Bitcoin/Crypto as payment options - one doesn't have to rule, all can rule together and coexist.

Fiat has a digital version and now will have the blockchain version. So I doubt Bitcoin will be an alternative for fiat since the Government is the biggest hurdle for this dream to happened. It’s only possible if people choose Bitcoin as an alternative voluntarily but I doubt that the majority will follow on this kind of movement.

Government will always find a way to advertise fiat over other cryptocurrencies that they can’t control since they re benefiting much on unlimited print rather than Bitcoin limited supply which they don’t have ny control.

In fact, there are always more and more research about how notes can be improved for better security and visibility of the nations pride. Physical notes ain't going anywhere because they are still widely used. Many places or people are there who would always use the cash as mode of transactions. The more you go from urban to sub urban and down to village areas this trend goes up. Though we can safely say that urbans also use cash when it comes to bigger transactions. Many people still prefer to carry the cash and pay in the shops and malls. Have you ever seen the Walmart lines at the cash till? You can easily do a quick survey how people still carry the cash with them as it gives sense of having enough money or safe money. Also notice that, if you use your credit cards and stuff then you never end up calculating how much money we are spending. So yeah that is also screwed up for many peoples.

I knew about Credit Card but did not know about Carte Bancaire (CB). With your information I learned that it is from French language.

Carte Bancaire from Google search is also for Bank cards, different types of card from banks.

Because Bitcoin is not cash. Like Gold is not cash and we can not use gold as cash.

We will have more bitcoins into circulating supply until 2140 when all 21 million bitcoins in its total supply will be created from Bitcoin block rewards.

Controlled supply, more correctly 20999999.9769 BTC are total supply of Bitcoin.

It's true that ATMs have been disappearing gradually and COVID-19 did encourage the use of contactless payments. But let's not forget that cash still has its place. Many businesses and individuals still rely on it for various reasons. Plus, some banks may refuse cash, but they can't deny its widespread acceptance.

As for cryptocurrencies like BTC, they do offer an alternative, but they have their own challenges too. Adoption and stability are key concerns. While they have potential, it's unlikely that they will completely replace cash anytime soon.

No one will use BTC as cash. The reason is very simple. Bitcoins are limited in numbers, that is no more Bitcoins can created or made. Hence people will show more interest than using it as an digital asset. Yes you can trade the coins for something else, but can’t use it properly as a currency or money. People might use online way of transferring funds, like Apple wallet, cashapp, or internet banking, but using Bitcoins for this as an alternative will definitely not work according to me. Will love to hear other’s opinions on this.

This is a topic I have talked about other times in the forum tangentially but I don't think in a thread dedicated exclusively to it. What is happening has already been summarized, the use of cash was gradually decreasing until during the Covid there was a push by the rulers saying that paying contactless was safer.

However, with the exception of specific countries, I believe that the elimination of cash will take time, although they will try to accelerate it. I believe that in most industrialized countries it may be at least a decade away.

As to whether Bitcoin is a good alternative, I don't think so, for reasons that have been explained a thousand times, mainly that it is a scarce commodity that is better to keep and not use to buy bread. But there will always be alternatives. Illegal businesses will continue to operate. Even corrupt politicians will continue to exist and if cash disappears they will use certain shitcoins or precious metals or who knows what, but there will be alternatives.

The bad thing is that everyone's daily life will be more controlled by companies and governments since many people of good taste do not use cash anymore, not caring that the data of everything they spend is in the hands of private companies. And essentially at the disposal of the authorities.

I think that in some countries Bitcoins are already a great alternative to the local currencies. Countries that have very high inflation makes dealing in their Fiat money hard as the value of the money changes so quickly. When businesses needs to change their prices multiple times a day to account for the hyper inflation, things are very bad and consumers might look for alternatives. Bitcoins would be the perfect alternative in such a case as it won't be affected by inflation in the same way. Another factor is the comfortability of paying with digital currencies, we don't need to carry around large amounts of cash anymore and can have a better overview over our expenses. When paying digitally we already have a summary of all our outgoing transactions, with cash it's much harder to keep on track of all the things we bought.

I don't think this is a fair comparison in the financial system, can't speak to the limitations of one versus the potentialities of another. We are in a common environment I think need more harmony in economic as well as financial system, crypto or btc can bring good solution but it doesn't mean they are applied properly, just like fiat in the current context we still have to rely heavily on them and this is almost the place for us to do all other connected things in life. Perhaps over time as science and technology evolves the way money is used and viewed will change, maybe crypto will be an area where people actually use so much that it's like we are using money everyday.