Electric currency could trash cash (1999)

To a certain extent it has. Living in London, I can't remember the last time I paid with cash! Now cryptocurrency is a whole other kettle of fish...

The original Chaum digital cash paper dates from 1982 ... the idea has been around for a long time. The two companies beanz and flooz mentioned in the article have, of course, gone bankrupt long ago.

One way to destroy Bitcoin would be to convince governments to launch a 51% attack against it.<p>An organized, worldwide campaign against BTC, complete with double-spends, would flatten the price.<p>I wonder if it&#x27;s still feasible? Eventually it will be too hard to mine, but perhaps not yet.<p>A benefit of this attack is that once executed, other miners will switch away from BTC. Meaning BTC won&#x27;t be able to spring up again: no one will be able to get more than the ~90% hash rate the government controls.

I have been wondering recently... how unlikely is it that a major IT failure&#x2F;hack&#x2F;whatever occurs which produces a tremendous lack of faith in our existing traditional-currency-backed systems, leaving cryptocurrencies with the only PROVABLE form of money? Walmart says they made $5 billion? Why should we trust that they&#x27;re telling the truth about that? They rely completely upon swiss-cheese computer systems built on sand and wishful thinking. They build their empire on slapped-together garbage full of holes and push it further than it was ever intended to go, adamantly refusing to slow down or devote the resources to building a dependable, reliable system. How unlikely is it that this will eventually bite them and the mathematical provability of cryptocurrency becomes of paramount, and nigh sole, value? Not as unlikely as those who have convinced bank computers to read large numbers for their balance, I expect.