Interesting & good points, OP.
There are many who support eliminating paper fiat and switching only to electronic based transactions. I would guess puerto rico would have been no better off as a cashless society. Puerto Rico's main issue could be poor leadership, having no viable plans for dealing with hurricanes despite being in a high risk natural disaster area and this being the season for large, powerful, storms.
With a decent proportion of infrastructure and electrical sources demolished, there may still not be enough infrastructure devoted towards precious metals, gemstones & other valuables having utility in markets. A person could have 100 pounds of gold stored in their basement in puerto rico and they still might not be able to use it to buy or sell anything. Precious metals need more mainstream acceptance & utility if their value is to increase.
Yes. Op is taking an exceptional situation in a poor country as if that posed a real threat to bitcoin. If an atomic bomb explodes and you are the only survivor, bitcoin will be useless but so will cash and gold be.
We are heading towards cashless societies, some countries like Sweden are almost there. Even beggars collect alms using payment terminals. Do you think, OP, that they would be better in a situation like that?
Not so exceptional. The level of devastation in PR is amazing and rare, to be sure, but there are other islands that were affected like this, this season (total ruin of infrastructure). These societies will be functioning off of cash for quite some time; cashlessness required a certain level of infrastructure that is not present everywhere even before a catastrophe.
We should never be cashless. Fiat simply is not the same; it is the quickest and safest way to make small informal transactions that is known to man to this date. This is why we have used cash for so long. Even specie works better, given there is less infrastructure required than any electronic cashless payment medium (there are some not electronic payment mediums that criminals have developed; its an interesting read).
I have lived off of cryptos for the past 3 years or so. I have possessed less than 500 USD cash at any given time during this period.
It fucking sucks. I only do it because I have gained massive value by doing so; it is actually quite a pain in the ass.
Try not being able to spend money on food for 2 days because your bitcoin debit card's site is under maintenance
And try not being able to survive for a week because you need a replacement debit card in the mail.
And e payments to beggars seems silly to me. Give them food and resources, not fiscal value.
