Will paper money ever go obsolete?

[Wraith]

It was obsolete when it was created ^_^

--"The solution? your driver's license, or state ids."

This is an even worse idea than the various e-cash and smart card proposals that have been tried. Not only would it set up a defacto national ID, but it would tie it to personal spending habits.
Have you looked over the Patriot Act II info? Or the original? Or the various banking reporting requirements? That would be a true nightmare.

--"However, many people don't want ANYBODY to be able to track how they spend their money."

E-cash and the like can actually be done in an untraceable manner. I'll try and look up some of the implementation info later.
The real problem is that no one is willing to do it right (and if it were done right the government wouldn't stand for it, since it would be untraceable).

--" There is an element of traceability, but there is no security risk like those normally associated with debit cards or credit cards."

There certainly is a security risk. It could be reduced far enough for the system to function (same as credit cards, really; security could be vastly improved on these quite easily, but the credit companies don't consider it worth the bother compared to the losses) if anyone was willing to do it.
I still think the main problem is going to be the governments. They have not been friendly towards any such system that made the right steps towards security and privacy.

Wraith
"With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too."
-- Yiddish Proverb

[Kropotkin]

The day I get a credit card and a cell phone will be the day that hell freezes over.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Wraith
--" There is an element of traceability, but there is no security risk like those normally associated with debit cards or credit cards."

There certainly is a security risk. It could be reduced far enough for the system to function (same as credit cards, really; security could be vastly improved on these quite easily, but the credit companies don't consider it worth the bother compared to the losses) if anyone was willing to do it.
I still think the main problem is going to be the governments. They have not been friendly towards any such system that made the right steps towards security and privacy.

Do you consider losing a phone card a security risk? How is losing a credited cash card a risk?

[Wraith]

--"How is losing a credited cash card a risk?"

Losing them isn't the risk I was talking about. If it was an anonymous same-as-cash sort of thing then if you lose it it's gone, same as cash. Not a security risk in itself, although if you put moderate to large sums on the card you need to be as careful as if you carry them in cash.
The security risks are elsewhere. Mostly in people doing things like forging cards, adding cash to existing cards, things like that. This is a bigger threat, in my opinion. I've been reading up on this sort of thing, and the history is just not at all promising. Too few companies willing to pay attention to the history of the field.

Wraith
"Money can't buy friends. But you can afford a better class of enemy."
-- Lord Mancroft

[Dauphin]

The security risks are elsewhere. Mostly in people doing things like forging cards, adding cash to existing cards, things like that.

Would it be a worse problem than paper money counterfeiting?

[Dinner]

There will always be people who don't want their transactions monitored and recorded so there will always be people who will use actial money instead of e-cash.

[Dis]

also I forgot to mention plastic isn't as fun to stuff down a stripper's g-string.

And Ming mentioned privacy. Some men don't want their wives to know they are stuffing money in some womans' g-string. Imagine that

[Starchild]

Yes, but dissident, imagine trying to pay a stripper with a debit card.

"err, I swipe the card where? Oh. there"

[Wraith]

--"Would it be a worse problem than paper money counterfeiting?"

In one sense, probably not. The actual cards should be harder to fake than cloth/paper money. However, this isn't the main problem.
The other sense is. The way people would really attack the cards would be to adjust the amount stored on them. If you could hack a higher dollar amount in, or could copy a high dollar amount onto a low-dollar card, etc... You'd only really need to do the apparatus once, then you're set.

It really all comes down to the implementation. No matter what's done, it'll be broken sooner or later. The only real question is how difficult it'll be to do once the basics are discovered.
Designing these things is not at all trivial, and the implementation of them is even less so. There are a lot of interesting attacks that have already been used against smart cards and the like. Differential power analysis, for instance, which measures the amount of power to card uses to help reverse engineer the encryption.

Wraith
"The NSA response was, 'Well, that was interesting, but there aren't any ciphers like that.'"
-- Gus Simmons ("The History of Subliminal Channels")

[DuncanK]

I'm sure someone has said this already. Paper money is too convinient to be entirely replaced.

[Kontiki]

I hope it doesn't. Even though I rarely use cash, it's still pretty cool. Nothing beats having a nice wad in a silver money clip

Seriously, they would have to do something about the speed of access for electronic money. When you go to a bar (or any other really busy (as in number of transactions) place), compare how long it takes to pay with debit to cash. Unless every place is either permanently connected to a network, or some other system becomes prominent (ie: cash cards and readers), then the speed with which money can be accessed is too slow.

Finally, consider how far away we are from these fast-transaction alternatives in North America and Europe (or parts of Asia) and think about how much further developing countries are.

[Grrr]

We don't have paper money here anyway. All our money is plastic which doesn't rip and has cool see-thru 'holes' in it .

The holes make it more difficult to fake.

[Grrr]

Originally posted by Kaak ... DLs already have magnetic strips on the back.

. The things you read between the lines when skim-scroll reading ... must make life a lot easier for the mods .