New Survey: Majority of Americans Favor Paper Money over Digital Money
Genesis Mining conducted a study titled “Perceptions and Understanding of Money 2020” whose results show that Americans do not like the idea of digital money and they prefer paper money over digital money.
Study of Genesis Mining
400 Americans participated in the study and gave the answers of 22 questions covering different topics: understanding of the financial system, trust of financial institutions, beliefs about money, and cryptocurrencies.
The finding of the survey unveil that 60% of people do not like the idea of paper money replacement with digital money. The Coronavirus pandemic has increased the pace towards a cashless society. “The U.S. news outlet Axios cites several figures and facts indicating that increased health-consciousness amid the global pandemic has accelerated the migration toward a cashless society,”Marco Streng, co-founder and CEO of Genesis Mining, said in his article on Cointelegraph.
Benefits of Cashless Payments
There are many benefits of cashless payments which are not assigned to physical money. First, it presents a “greater difficulty for muggers and thieves to rob you of your physical money.” Second, a cashless money system provides a “greater ability to trace illegal activity that could be more easily perpetrated by laundering cash through businesses, banks and other means without a trace.” Third, it includes “faster transactions (on average), less hassle for customers who would otherwise have to procure, store, count and dole out cash, and the fact that customers are statistically more likely to spend more at a business using a card rather than cash.” Fourth, there is an ease of currency exchange with cashless money.
Genesis Mining CEO concluded by saying:
“With proper oversight and security, the move toward cashless payment mechanisms could provide numerous benefits, and cryptocurrency-level security may be an integral feature of the move toward cashlessness.”
The need for a digital currency or cashless payment system is more demanding after the pandemic. According to the latest report, nearly 70% of central banks accepted the idea of central bank digital currency (CBDC) and most of them have actually started working over it.