I am not in the business they are in. I am sure that credit card companies assign different floats for different businesses based on risk.

My wine guy, an Indian of great education (I gave his son a two year subscription to the Economist) has the same issue.

You know what happens when you assume.

Just as likely is that they figured out people would just put it on the CC and pay now. 98.5% of a bird in the hand is worth 100% of a bird in the bush

I think that's a big part of it, also returns effect timing I think. Could also be a very low fee percentage if you wait 30 days to get paid. or they just didn't do their homework. A lot of scams out there.

Pay now? These are restaurants. A ton of restaurants in Boston are cash only, typically pub or stand style that are cash only, orders written in pen on little green pads. Old style cash registers. No authentic record. Easy to skim 5 figures a year.

No question. I like your OP.

Oh, I thought since you said cash only businesses, you meant, cash only businesses, rather than solely restaurants. Maybe they saw their business fall off with the cash only deal. What benefit do they get from taking credit cards if they were audited?

Any business can make cash disappear, not just restaurants.

About 50% of my business is on credit cards and I get the money deposited into my account about 12 hours later.

The trick to not getting audited is consistency.
A friend of mine has a business and does 80% cash in pocket. He wants to go straight to increase the value of the business so he can sell. If he does he will for sure get audited and the past will not balance. Either way he is screwed.

Maybe not when everything is on a blockchain.

I'm wondering if money, or some version of it, will go the route of social media. Facebook is free to use because you are the product. I think it will start slowly, that is you can use money for free, no fees for transactions like paypal, or interest rates (most likely reduced interest rates) when you yourself are monetized. I'm just not sure how far that model can go.

In 2001 when I was in marketing, I spec'd and had a system built that would track the moment you clicked on a banner or any other kind online link which brought you to a very specific website which asked you to register and opt in allowing us to track your clickstream through the site over time including to responses to lead nurturing emails. The net result was creating a unique lead profile and also optimizing media against quality of leads determined by registration answers and response to the nurturing campaign thereby adjusting the ad campaign to deliver the lowest cost per highest quality leads.

This is somewhat being used today but I think it could be modified to actually monetize people directly and in the process add to the definition of money.

Wards went out of business quite some time ago without the hand wringing.

THe face of retail has changed, whether that be instant price shopping using your cell phone or the "Buy anywhere, pickup/deliver anywhere" mentality that consumers have - it will never be the same. Many companies were not prepared to deal with it and are paying the consequence.

The "Amazon effect" is putting on severe pressure as well. IN short - they got complacent and are now paying the price. The advantage they have is "Brick and Mortar" stores where you can put your hands on the merchandise before you buy. ...but the overhead is tremendous.

Huge rewards for the companies that figure this out. Were I a CEO in the space - I would figure out how I complete against amazon or lower their 10-15% cut of every sale. That is the entire margin for many retailers.

Trust is indeed the essential element. There is an island, Yap, where the coins weigh tons, some of them are at the bottom of the ocean and haven’t been seen for 100 years, but the people of Yap all agree on their value and trade them back and forth as if they were gold Eagles.
“Hey Yog, ill trade you my big stone disc sitting at the bottom of the bay out there that no one alive has ever seen for 5 of your goats.”
“Wow Zug, that is a smoking hot deal, here are your goats. OK everybody, from this day forward the big stone disc in the middle of the bay that no one has ever seen is mine.”

The future of money is whatever enough of us agree we will use to make markets work.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money

Although probably not the book you're thinking of, The Creature From Jekyll Island should be required reading.

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I don't pretend to have thought deeply about this, or to be any sort of expert. However, on the original topic:

1. Governments have a very strong interest in maintain the primacy of their "official" money. They have the ability to suppress and marginalize an alternative money, if and when they deem it a threat. The higher-tech the alternative, the more vulnerable to government measures. For example, if the US govt ever thought a cybercurrency was threatening the US dollar, it would simply intercept all internet traffic related to that cybercurrency and penalize anyone who transacts in it or facilitates transactions. No doubt the NSA already tracks bit/alt-coin transactions that it finds of interest.

2. Money is not intrinsically stable. The US dollar is externally defended and stabilized by a lot of law enforcement (anti-counterfeiting, money-laundering, etc) and, much more important, a huge amount of regulatory powers (over banks, exchanges, networks) and an almost unlimited capacity to intervene. Currencies that do not have such powerful defenses are volatile (Weimar German mark, Argentine peso, Greek drachma, Turkish lira, etc) and can lose 20%, 40%, 80% of their value during crises, so no-one uses those currencies unless they are essentially compelled to (like, they are physically located in Argentina). A cybercurrency which has no external defenses is likely to be more unstable and risky than the peso, drachma, lira, etc.

3. Anything cyber can be hacked, and a decentralized cybercurrency with no external controller/defender will have difficulty responding to a big enough hack, due to lack of central powers and a brittle design. If someone was able to hack and hijack SWIFT electronic transactions in the US dollar in a massive, currency-threatening way, the US govt and other world govts would exercise emergency powers, roll back all transactions and accounts to before the event, and repair the vulnerabilities. When someone figures out how massively hack a cybercurrency's blockchain algorithms/encryptions, there will be no central authority to force through a solution, and no way to switch to different algorithms/encryptions to fix the vulnerability because all the currency is, is a specific set of algorithms/encryptions.

I guess what I'm saying is, a currency is more than some cleverly designed formulae; it is the universal agreement of a society (willing or compelled) to accept a certain unit of exchange. As long as there is a central government with the power to to enforce that agreement, there is flexibility to change all other aspects of the currency as needed, and that is why currencies like the USD are resilient.

So it is going to be different this time. Just another example of immutable American genius at work here. That is why the Chinese are backing the RMB with Gold for their oil exchange.

Brexit happened as a reversion to the old timey ways...

I have said decades ago that Americans do not understand currency volatility in that the USD has been the rock of Gibraltar for over 200 years. No conception...

And with the manipulative games that are being played the day is coming where Americans will reap the whirlwind.

In 67 DeGaulle demanded that the USD's that were being left behind by American tourists be repriated for Gold at the fixed rate of $35 an oz. He then would sell the Gold off at apx $110 an oz in Europe which was reflective of the true worth of the USD on the world market.

The French were tired of supporting an over valued USD. That is the reason why Nixon in 72 decoupled the USD from Gold. But to maintain USD as the reserve currency the US made a deal with the Saudis that all oil transactions be settled in USD.

The US needs the Saudi's...and that is why the Chinese oil exchange being settled in RMB backed by Gold is a dagger aimed right at the American heart. USD hegemony. With out hegemony America is fked.

Why are the Chinese setting up their own OIL exchange ....abject fear about American monetary and fiscal policy. They see America headed for the cliff of oblivion and are trying desperately to avoid going over with the US.

I wrote about that in 09.

The double whammy of LBJ's Guns & Butter social welfare Great Society and fighting the Vietnam war is fking you in the azz. It has set the stage for everything that has followed and you Boys are too stupid to know it. Your stupidity is so evident in the inane diatribes that go on here and elsewhere. One wonders if anyone gets the totality of it all?

The US and Global fiscal and monetary situation is like a plane crash where the wreckage is strewn over miles of the countryside.

Gold is finite in its availability and there are real costs associated with its extraction and refinement. On the other hand is fiat money, which can be created out of thin air at virtually no cost and that is is essentially and effectively infinite in its availability. Our government detested and couldn't/wouldn't abide the restraints gold placed on spending.

Work from there and you'll figure out the real reason behind the decoupling.

_

I think the current US govt is overplaying its hand. They think that because the USD is the dominant global reserve currency and almost every major company/govt needs access to the US banking system, they can arbitrarily and unilaterally dictate terms to anyone.

Certainty the US has immense power due to the central role of its currency/banks. In the short term we can bully almost anyone. But if we are perceived by others as abusing that power too much, others will eventually find a way to side-step the USD/US banks if they have the power. The Chinese may have the power, they see breaking free from dependence on USD/US banks as a matter of national survival, and they are accumulating allies as fast as we are alienating ours.

When and if the USD loses its reserve status and international transactions can bypass the reach of US banking regulators, we will suffer pain vastly greater than whatever dubious benefits we think we're getting today.

Our govt thinks transactionally and in months/years. They need to think strategically and in decades.