If anything it's cash that's drunk. It has multiple personalities and there's a huge problem with cloning.
Cryptocurrency is a reasonably-likely future of money, provided that cryptography itself doesn't somehow become irrelevant. From a counterfeiting perspective it's more secure than bank notes and adding a reliable physical component would make it functionally-indistinguishable from bank notes.
I'm just eagerly awaiting the day I can get paid for my work in Nuyen, chummer. I've got a hot new cyberdeck and some implants to pay for. Just remember the Golden Rule: Never make a deal with a dragon.
> Bank notes that cannot be exchanged for gold at fixed rate are recent invention
Keep in mind that the ostensibly "fixed" rates were adjusted time and again --- effectively they were floating rates, just not as real-time as today, but in very.. slow.. motion.
Also -- pretty sure they existed before at times and places from time to time. Probably never lasted well over 40 years before 1971 though. Brilliant move really, US, stuff the world with countless "redeemable" notes, then cancel redeemability :D
That said, there is no law of nature that dictates that state treasuries should forever remain vulnerable to runs on their vaults. Even if they never inflate the paper, just by honestly trying to maintain a fixed paper=gold exchangability, the populace / debtor countries will always pay taxes / debts in paper and otherwise exchange their excess paper for the treasury's gold, until it's all gone.
Countries and empires have gone through this time and again for centuries before "Nixon put an end to it" so to speak, and it didn't exactly crash the world (after a little bit of turbulence for a few years) or hamper economic growth or hinder technological innovation ever since. 43 years with some "financial crisis" regularly roughly every turn-of-decade (but those existed ever since "finance" as such began if we're honest)..
The fixed-rate regimes were always conned by governments/treasuries sooner or later, so a floating rate really seems the more honest alternative and look, it kinda-sorta 'evolved' to that end after all! Turns out, that paper can be redeemed in metal for those few who really do still care about it is more important to them than the exact rate ---a true gold-bug cares not about it's "fiat price"!--- and this way, the central banks can keep their own stuff which they're heavily into themselves and send people off to the mines and markets. Not such a bad deal for all, after all.
1971 puts it a little too close to the present. Individuals haven't been able to convert notes to hard currency since June 5, 1933, when legal tender laws were introduced.
That said, I still agree with the thrust of your argument, that we're in new territory with regard to unbacked paper money.
> Individuals haven't been able to convert notes to hard currency
In the US! Well, the rest of the world had other worries back then anyway, and after WW1 + WW2 most of the world's gold was on US soil thanks to trade flows and custody deals and debts etc etc. Hard to keep a gold standard when all the gold is with one party for all intents and purposes ;)
Simple certainly is good. It requires technology to create the notes but none to transfer them.
There is goodness in this. Hey, the lights are out -- can I buy some water from you -- my family is thirsty -- no? sorry, not until the the intertubes are back on.
I'm not claiming that cash is somehow better in all ways to crypto-currency
Simple can be good, but simple is not automatically equal to good, it requires justification. Secondly, crypto-currency doesn't necessarily mean electronic, bitcoins can be just as physical as cash; they do not require Internet to trade, only to spend online. Physical bitcoins[1] have already been sold.
bank notes are a very simple system, so simple it has been used for over a thousand years.