What's a good substitute for paper money if we ever run out of it to use as currency?

Question

What's a good substitute for paper money if we ever run out of it to use as currency?

Answer 1

Actually most money is already electronic: patterns of 0s and 1s in databases run by banks, businesses and governments. So we're already using bits to represent currency.

This is easy to understand if you think of credit and debit cards rather than coins and paper. In principle we could change to electronic money tomorrow, but in practice we still need a way to deal with small payments like buying a newspaper. We need something like an electronic wallet. Mobile phones have been suggested, or London's Oyster card, a contactless payment system used for public transport fares.

Answer 2

Credit cards, checks.

Answer 3

QUID.

A bit too big....

Answer 4

Unless you know of a shortage in the Cotton industry, don't expect the Govt to run out of paper money.

But if such did happen, the next best substitute would be Metal Coins. The downside is that coins have an intrinsic value, which currently exceeds its face face. For instance the penny has a face value of $0.01/cents.  Its intrinsic value is $0.014/cents. Meaning that you could melt down the penny and resell it for the value of its metal content and obtain more money than the face value of the coin is worth.

Answer 5

The governments have been trying to do away with hard cash for at least the last 25 years.

When you use a card or chq. it all ends up being numbers on a piece of paper,where all your transactions can be traced,just another form of keeping tabs on us all.

If it was ever done away with, one of the options would be to go back to a barter system,where you exchange your goods or a service for someone elses goods or service.