Features

The death of cash is no longer exaggerated

Smartphones are replacing cash, and it's not a change we should be complacent about.

11 November 2020

The history of hard currency is fascinating and full of contradictions. For example, a leading historical theory argues that money didn't start as a currency in the commerce world. Ancient trading systems worked according to crop cycles and seasonable availability of certain items, not to mention elaborate recordkeeping systems. It’s tempting to wonder if the spreadsheet preceded the written word.

Cash currency thus came into being because kings needed to pay mercenaries, and mercenaries were too transient to wait for next year's harvest as payment. The same might be said for helping equip armies, supporting lavish building projects and funding infrastructure. Certainly, the merchant class didn't seem to take long to adopt cash as its own – perhaps because it was more convenient than moving around with lumps of precious metal, arguably the first hard currency. But the point is that cash helped unlock, for other uses, the financial stockpile in long-term barter arrangements.

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