I regularly listen to the financial conspiracy theory crowds on Youtube. They offer interesting angles on ideas. There are a few of them that claim that Bitcoin is just another way to get the world to a cashless society.
What is cash?
I see cash as the paper dollars that we can use to buy things without being tracked digitally. I get why some people are afraid of this. Cash does have serial numbers on it to both provide information that it is not fraudulent and maybe that can be used to track people but it is slow and expensive to do so.
Why fear cashless society?
If none of your transactions are private, can be easily tracked, and you have powerful enemies against you, then I guess it is something to fear. Our credit cards are already a cashless society item. Our banks do not have enough physical cash to support all of the regular transactions. This allows for a “run on the bank”! That is what has been feared in the past. With bitcoin, you can have a run on the exchanges that convert bitcoin into government currencies, but always able to transact peer to peer on the network in bitcoin.
How do I see bitcoin in this scenario?
Bitcoin is its own cash. Inside the network, bitcoin is traceable and because of that you can verify that a quantity of bitcoin is authentic. If I paid you in diamonds, you would need to get a professional to check if the diamonds are real or what their real value is. The bitcoin network already does this and the open exchange markets give us price information at any moment. Does anyone have the power to turn your specific bitcoin off?
So I say progress slowly, know the limits, continue to learn, but bitcoin is not the great cashless society conspiracy in my opinion. What do you think a cashless society means?