Digital Cash: Negatives Outweigh Benefits
TEAM B: Andy Freeman Seema Mane Daniel Dillard Jacqueline Sewell Je-Seung Yoo
ISSUES
Transaction anonymity Reliability Acceptance Global Could divide society Fraudulent use Massive investment
Hard to remain anonymous with transactions
Paper
money is completely anonymous Digital cash can be traced easily
Reliability
All
transactions are contingent upon quality of hardware and software. We know those things can break down.
Acceptance
DigiCash
and two other companies went out of business last year because of lack of acceptance
Global
Global
issues are also of concern Encryption could be more laxed in other areas of the world, causing great security issues.
Society
Many people in society don’t believe in computers. Many of those don’t understand them. Values could be compromised. The way money is perceived and respected could change drastically.
Fraud
Easy to duplicate Since the copy is indistinguishable from the original you might think that counterfeiting would be impossible to detect. A trival emoney system would allow one to copy digital cash and spend both copies. This fraud could go undetected until too late
Massive investment
Massive financial investment to replace all cash registers and ATMs
Who takes on this cost?