Thirty years ago most people used cash.  Today, the world has turned away from cash and towards a variety of electronic payments, like credit cards, Venmo and cryptocurrencies.  Most young people don’t even carry paper money.  While many see this movement as a wonderful trend, the digital shift has overlooked dark sides.  Eliminating cash can harm us in many ways.  It causes us to spend more, reduces our privacy and boosts prices we pay.  It hits the poor especially hard by making them pay for bank services they cannot afford.  It weakens our national defense by making us vulnerable to cyberattacks and natural disasters.  It increases crime since criminals can target us from anywhere in the world.

  Countless times technologists have presented the electronic future as utopia, but have failed to comprehend technology’s problems. This book sounds an alarm, because once paper money, ATMs and cash registers are gone it will cost billions to restore them.  Cash is an essential tool and this book shows why preserving it for the long run makes us all better off.