Paper money will probably never go away (hey, they couldn’t even get rid of the penny), but bills and coinage will increasingly be replaced by some sort of electronic equivalent.
Predictor: Gleason, Donald
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine on e-cash, Steven Levy quotes Donald Gleason of Electronic Payment Services Inc. Levy writes: ”‘Cash is a nightmare,’ says Donald Gleason, president of the Smart Card Enterprise unit of Electronic Payment Services Inc. ‘It costs money handlers in the U.S. alone approximately $60 billion a year to move the stuff, a line item ripe for drastic pruning. The solution is to cram our currency in burn bags and strike some matches. This won’t happen all at once, and paper money will probably never go away (hey, they couldn’t even get rid of the penny), but bills and coinage will increasingly be replaced by some sort of electronic equivalent.'”
Date of prediction: December 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: E-cash
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: E-Money (That’s What I Want)
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/emoney_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Lusk, James T.