Could Blockchain Be Used More Appropriately To Facilitate Cashless Society?

Thinking out loud is often done in a haste hints the nature of it.  Thus my thinking out loud in this post isn’t solid, but I like to dabble on here.  One thing people fear about a cashless society is that once the digital numbers are being erased somehow, their worth would be gone without any trace for recovering.  Thus, people are definitely still preferring cash as a mean for emergency backup.  After all, if their digital world is being shut down, they got cash to help them survive daily such as buying foods and whatnot.

Bitcoin is probably going to be an enemy of the banks since banks want to be the middlemen of the transactions.  Bitcoin takes out the middlemen role and allows people to have a direct transaction between the two parties.  In order for the bank to receive commission and gain liquid fund, the bank needs to be able to insert itself into the deal.  Simply put, Bitcoin is against a traditional bank which isn’t accepting Bitcoins!

Banks can accept Bitcoins, but people won’t use banks as of how they would use a traditional bank.  Bitcoin users may want a bank to behave as a trustful Bitcoin exchange to facilitate the Bitcoin transactions in safety manners.  This way any Bitcoin bank can still insert a banking role in a non-traditional way into the deal.  Since Bitcoin will be more transparent — plus demoting a traditional banking role somewhat, I don’t think the banks will be able to create more creative derivative means for creative investments.  I could be wrong since this is thinking out loud session.

Bitcoin is also very similar to a cashless society because it isn’t cash and it’s digital medium.  Taking away Bitcoin, underneath it all is the technology itself which is the blockchain.  The blockchain technology is more important than the clothes it is wearing such as a crypto coin (i.e., Bitcoin).  Why?  I think blockchain technology is good at keeping transactions honest.  This honesty is rather important for cashless society don’t you think?  Nonetheless, current Bitcoin way isn’t helpful for blockchain technology since the implementation is rather crude, allowing people to hack and steal each other Bitcoin without a clear way to trace back to the original owner of the lost Bitcoins.

If I’m not wrong, a will be successful cashless society could use the blockchain technology to keep cashless money honest so the original owner of the money won’t fear the tyranny of a cashless society shutdown event.  By that I mean the only way for a person in such a society to lose wealth is being incriminated with evidence and wealth get confiscated by a court of law.  In such an orderly way the blockchain technology could be used to keep track what money belongs to whom before the exchange takes place and long afterward so a cashless society shutdown event which occurs by any other mean besides the legal ones such as the one I stated just a moment earlier would be a futile effort.

I think people would be able to accept a cashless society when their wealth won’t be suddenly disappeared overnight in a mysterious event.  Of course, people are still going to fear that if they’re innocent and being convicted wrongly; their wealth got confiscated in such a rude event — they could be helpless as they would not be able to survive daily when their digital wealth got shut down in a cashless society.  I think once one accepts a cashless society, one has to accept such possibility as there won’t be any legal cash laying around to act as a legal tender for acquiring daily things.

By writing this blog post, it doesn’t mean I support a cashless society!  I just merely thinking about the possibilities and effects of it all when such a society occurs.  Although China isn’t a purely cashless society, because paper money is still going to be a legal tender within China.  Nonetheless, China is one of those countries that is leading the race in facilitating the use of money through digital devices such as the smartphone.  I think once the money becomes digital numbers, money is indeed facilitating a cashless society.  A cashless society is definitely taking some shapes or forms around the world, and so I’m writing this to amuse myself with both negative and positive possibilities of such a phenomenon.

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