Miami Valley Coin Club

A Cashless Society?

Will digital commerce spell the end to coins and paper currency? As collectors we certainly hope not. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t think coins and paper money will go away either. Below is an excerpt from last weekend’s edition:

“It turns out that good old-fashioned cash has a constituency—and investors may regret ignoring it. Shares of companies whose fortunes are tied to physical cash in a major way, such as ATM providers like Cardtronics or Diebold Nixdorf, or companies that transfer or protect cash, like Western Union or Brink’s, soared last year. Over the past year through Thursday, those four stocks on average are up 83%. That easily tops the average 39% gain for Mastercard, PayPal, Square and Visa.

Only two countries, Russia and Sweden, had a net substitution of cards for cash from 2007 to 2016, with cash in circulation shrinking as card payments grew…In other countries tracked, including the U.S., both cash demand and card payments have grown.”

Warning to all you online only shoppers:

If and when a major power outage occurs you may as well go to bed because you wont be able to spend your electronic money. And If the power does go out, where can you go shopping anyway? And another thought; do you really want all of your money to be stored digitally on a piece of silicon, one that could be hacked and stolen?