What the Mark of the Beast Taught Me About the Future of Money

I tend to agree with the article that mobile payments and such don&#x27;t feel like they provide much value.<p>If there are system allowed people to walk into stores and just take stuff without waiting in line, the time savings would be huge. But the time spent in actually physically swiping a credit card is minimal so even once the glitches are gone, the payoff in convenience is mediocre at best.

As the article makes quite clear, mobile payments are overrated. However, I have experienced a situation where mobile payments have been better than existing systems. Not too long ago, I discovered some fraudulent transactions on my credit card transaction log. My bank, Chase, immediately issued me a new credit card. Apple Pay updated within less than 15 minutes with the new card while it took a number of days for the new credit card to arrive in the mail.

Why implants? They are such a hassle to upgrade. I thought we&#x27;d skip them entirely and go from wallets to phones to fingerprints. And then to a central AI that can recognize you from a video feed.

Cash is not going away anytime soon for at least a couple of reasons: Trust (Account Overloards say I have 100 USD in my account when I actually have 1,000), and cash is a very handy debt instrument for the issuer.<p>(and)<p>FDR did not take the US off the gold standard, he outlawed private ownership of gold. Nixon took the US off the gold standard in the early 70s.

Fun fact, the mark is on the hand, to the believer of the time of Revelation your whole arm is considered your hand. The letter &quot;YOD&quot; in ancient pictographic Hebrew was the picture of a hand (it&#x27;s a full arm, but described usually as just a hand), the letter Yod is the tiniest in modern Hebrew.

Does any one have a guess as to how future-proof these current chips are? Just like other new tech products, I can&#x27;t imagine that they will be fully compatible with the majority of the payment ecosystem in 10 years.

Let me begin by saying that I am a Christian.<p>Generally speaking I am a big believer that much of the Bible needs to be interpreted, and in general I don&#x27;t buy into the idea that it is infallible. That said, I don&#x27;t think I could get a chip implanted in my right hand for payment purposes! It&#x27;s just so on the nose with what the scripture actually says.

This is a very fascinating story for me. I remember as a child my ( conservative, christian ) parents having long, serious discussions about credit cards and banking. They were wrestling with the same section of scripture that the writer quoted, Revelations 13:16-17:<p>&quot;It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads,so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.&quot;<p>They ended up concluding that there was no way to avoid plastic credit cards, but if technology ever advanced to the point where payments via subcutaneous microchip that they would reject it. I remember thinking how futuristic and far-off that sounded, but now this is a procedure that can be done today. I personally have left a lot of those beliefs behind, but I don&#x27;t know if I could ever feel comfortable getting a chip implanted in my hand like the writer did.