Which IMO highlights what the money is. It’s a trust bond, nothing more and nothing else.

Paper money isn’t guaranteed to be always accepted. It only takes most governments a one day to say something like “because of <big crisis> we’re no longer accepting <currency> as they’re subject to <something bad>”. Paper money becomes fireplace material in an instant. (Or dystopian scenario - dictator decides that currency transactions can be done only by citizens, all other transactions are void).

What is really weird is this dualism in trust. On one side there’s distrust to government controlled organizations about online money, and on the other there’s trust that government (own or foreign) won’t regulate it into oblivion for some silly reason.

If we get to apocalypse level crisis one is much better off on stocking cigarettes, coffee and chocolate anyway…

I think there's the disconnect between the US perspective and the other countries which makes the discussions difficult.

The EU caps the credit card rate at 0.2-0.3%, so the moral argument for not using card payments is a lot weaker, and most countries have also widely used non credit card electronic payment.

SEA countries are mostly in the same boat, with higher credit card fees but more competition.

No one reputable cares about cash anymore. The people clinging to paper money are analog conspiracy nutters, the kind of people who hoard pennies in mason jars and refuse convenient contactless payments. I'm pleased to see them awkwardly counting out wrinkled bills while the rest of us tap and go at the spaces I inhabit.

Denmark is often cited as an example of a society that's advanced for electronic payments, and it is — but there's a law here that means, in most circumstances, a business must accept cash.

The official advice was changed from "keep some cash for emergencies" to "keep some cash in small banknotes for emergencies" to "pay in cash at least sometimes, to keep the systems that deal with it functioning".