Privacy

Cash Talks is a series of webinars debating critical trends and issues in the cash space. The second Cash Talk focused on the issues arising from the parallel circulation of cash and Central Bank Digital Currencies.

Monetary theory teaches that the three functions of money are a store of value, a unit of account, and a medium of exchange. This article reveals a fourth fundamental function - identification - and questions the political and social implications for private and public issuers of money.

Deutsche Bank Research forecasts that not only will cash be around for a long time but the digitalisation of payments has the potential to rebalance global economic power.

We have succumbed to the inevitability of digitalisation and the associated monetisation of money, the cynical conversion of the public good called cash into its privatised digital equivalent. In the process, we are losing the social utility of cash.

Privacy is engraved in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, now more than ever privacy is threatened by the increasing use of algorithms, the omnipresence of Bigtech, the rise of cybercrime and especially during the pandemic limitations to individual freedom. Financial privacy is also an essential human right.