12 NEWS & F E AT U R ES
SIN Vol. 21 Issue 09
The future of cash By Sadhbh Hendrick What exactly is cash? According to Investopedia, ‘Cash is legal tender currency or coins - that can be used to exchange goods, debt or services.’ Society has always placed value in trading, be it commodities or otherwise, to gain goods or services not previously in their possession. We have come a long way since barter style trading. As we progressed to exchanging precious metals as a form of money, we eventually saw through the introduction of cash. A practical, portable and durable form of money that allowed for easy transactions, encouraged specialization, the list goes on. As we now consider if it is time to bid farewell to our fond, familiar friend cash, we appreciate the many benefits of coins and notes have provided us with for hundreds of years. Moving ‘swiftly’ onwards, let’s discuss the alternatives to cash, any disadvantages associated with coins and notes and eventually begin a country by country investigation about the direction of cash’s future. So, my inverted commas around swiftly were not a typo, rather a reference to SWIFT Payment 1, one of the largest financial messaging systems
in the world. In a nutshell, SWIFT is one of endless alternatives to cash payments. According to PwC, certain ‘Technological advances and solutions that could change the face of payments if they turn out to be scalable, resource efficient and sustainable’ include: social payments, NFC technology, Bluetooth Low Energy and Blockchain Technology. Fear not, we need not all obtain a degree in computer science or technology simply to buy our messages for the week or the daily newspaper. On the contrary, we daren’t forget our trusty steeds, the debit card and credit card. Electronic payment options that are easily accessible, understandable and widely used. In short, it is important to acknowledge that electronic or online payment does not immediately equate to some sophisticated coding platforms or a new form of trading that’s only understood by the chic 20 something year old hipsters of the world in downtown café’s and eco-friendly, (potentially FBI spywarerigged, hello, webcams?) apartments. Nonetheless, this dark and scary world of Blockchain Technology does still exist. What is this mysterious technology? Straightforward question; cannot say the same about the answer.
In recent years, Bitcoin has become as big a buzz word as avocado, vegan and vanilla soy latte. But who can precisely recite what this strangely titled new currency is? Peeling it back, what is crypto-currency? Impressively and concisely put by BlockGeeks.com, cryptos are just ‘limited entries in a database no one can change without fulfilling specific conditions.’ So, essentially, just another form of cash, but cash which is active in an entirely different environment – the internet. Blockchain technology provides an appropriate platform for these forms of currency to thrive. And whilst your average Joe Soap may not understand or place any mass on Bitcoin, or one of its rivals, such as Ripple, due to its failure to satisfy all three money functions, there’s no denying the very real fluctuating share prices in these cryptos and the list of very credible firms currently accepting Bitcoin as payment. From Subway to Microsoft and every Bloomberg subscription in between, we simply cannot argue with the facts, this alternative form of payment is showing no signs of slowing down. Considering further the world of crime, tax evasion, gangland activity and the leading role cash has to play in
An EC369 inspired essay. If you know, you know. this more-successful-than-Shakespeare production. Whilst in the initial stages of researching for this article, I posed the question, ‘What is the future of cash?’ to my friends, family members, acquaintances etc. Essentially anyone that would listen to me. I posed the question with bated breath each time in the hope that one of them would present me with a groundbreaking idea or notion, an older, more mature outlook or a fresh, intriguing millennial insight. Unfortunately, this didn’t come to fruition and so crushed were my dreams of becoming the next Miriam O’ Callaghan, you know? One interesting pattern amongst my interviewees, however, was their lack of optimism. The majority told me outright that cash has no future. None. Just like romantic Ireland, it’s ‘dead and gone, it’s with O Leary in the grave’. Naturally, I pressed them for more information. Why? Why is everyone so certain? And the only two answers I received, from upward of 20 people, was the reliance on debit cards and also the eradication of higher denomination notes and the lowest denomination coins. On a final note, it’s important to summarise and reinforce the conclu-
sion of my evaluation. After examining what exactly cash is and waving hello to its friends or foes trying to ‘Revolutionise’ the world of payments, I still believe the future of cash is bright. Cash cannot be totally eradicated without isolating and imposing grave difficulty upon the more vulnerable members of society. Nevertheless, in an age of rapid technology developments and app developer after coding whizz-kid, we must still appreciate and welcome alternatives to cash. The use of cryptocurrencies or elimination of higher denominated notes in a war on crime or struggle against financial crises are not life-threatening to cash. Cash alternatives are not a terminal diagnosis on notes and coins. Rather, a call for necessary action to be taken to accommodate the uses of both cash and alternatives in the diverse and ever-changing world we live in. As proclaimed by UKFinance.org, cash remains king, however its crown is slipping. It is slipping as a result of Dogecoin or Ripple, electronic payments, cards, online banking, and apps such as SWIFT, but nonetheless, it is still only slipping. Much like Michael D. Higgins, cash is here to stay.
Mature Student Diary By Jody Moylan All of a sudden, I feel like Karl Marx. And no, despite what you might be thinking, I haven’t become a socialist revolutionary over night, or a man whose influence will decide the fate of nations (though both are on my bucket list). No, it’s because, like Karl, I am writing in conditions of profound chaos. I was flicking through a biography of the great Prussian last week, when I really ought to have been studying. I discovered that for all his legend and cool-cat status, Marx was a bit of a disaster when it came to organising himself. Now, I don’t think I’ve got the personal hygiene issues that Karl never sorted out (though you tell me), nor the chronic financial anxieties (though I ain’t rich), the status of exile, nor the personal tragedies either. But I do feel his pain about ‘the long days and nights of frenzied reading and writing, followed by collapses into exhaustion’. Yes, the pressure is well and truly on, and Christmas now seems like many moons ago. There are a few deadlines looming, goose-stepping steadily towards me. As a third year, it seems like I’ve been living with these deadlines for a long time now; constantly tip-tapping away at the back of my mind. But I’ve got this far, and I have to believe the work will get done; it always does. In any case, the modules I’m studying this semester are very interesting, and it’s not the worst way
to be spending your time — that’s why I’m back here after all. Coincidentally, given that it’s back in the news, the Holocaust has come up in our history syllabus. It really is fascinating stuff. I’m particularly thinking about our latest readings, namely the rise of the Third Reich, and the plummeting of civilised German society. I remember looking at a brilliant lecture series on YouTube by John Merriman, on European Civilisation. He’s a famous name to anyone who studies European history and one thing I remember from those lectures was when he talked about Christopher Browning’s book Ordinary Men, which we’re now reading. I had somehow imagined that those Nazi soldiers we’ve gotten used to seeing in films like Schindler’s List were the real deal; the raw, robotic embodiment of hate they’ve been portrayed as. And that’s probably what they were, when they crossed that line, and left the real world behind. But in Ordinary Men, we get to see them before all that. Those screaming monsters who had entered the ghettos had once been truck drivers and dock workers. They’d worked in warehouses and on building-sites. They had once been machine operators, sea-men, and waiters. When, all along, you’d thought they couldn’t have been from your world, the realisation that they were, that they’d once been ‘ordinary men’ is somehow, in some ways, the most disturbing thing you’ll ever read. Browning’s is a great
book, doing what great books do; telling you something you never knew. In a similar vein, my new history research project, on Ireland’s famine of 1817, is uncovering all sorts of interesting information that I’d really known nothing about. It’s a forgotten period, overshadowed in popular imagination by the Great Famine, but 1817 is a fertile ground for research, with online databases like the Irish Newspaper Archives and the British Parliamentary Papers giving us not just a glimpse, but a whole story of life in Ireland two centuries ago. The fever epidemic that followed
that famine lasted right up until 1819, and maybe now is the right time to be remembering it, exactly 200 years on. One topic we’ve not covered yet has been World War One, but I made time recently to get to the cinema to see 1917. From the advertising shots, I went in expecting something like Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, an edgy and dark film, unique and powerful, with a lingering effect. I was left disappointed by 1917, a forgettable movie that played up to sentiment and cliché and gave us nothing new. Somewhat better was Uncut Gems; a film I caught last week, before all those
deadlines began to march in my direction. Adam Sandler as the lead plays a bumbling, chaotic, and completely unlikeable character, but you can’t for one second take your eyes off him. Now that’s a sign of great writing. Hopefully, when I hand in my assignments, my own writing will at least be readable. And though I should have read more of Marx last year, when we studied him, at least I learned something worthwhile this time round: no matter how chaotic his life, he always managed, in the end, to get everything he was doing done.
