Cloudmoney

Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets

Brett Scott

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780062936325
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Finance
• Index: Business

Axiom Award Gold Medalist for Business Commentary

The reach of Corporations into our lives via cards and apps has never been greater; many of us rarely use cash these days. But what we're told is a natural and inevitable move is actually the work of powerful interests. And the great battle of our time is the battle for ownership of the digital footprints that make up our lives.

In Cloudmoney, Brett Scott tells an urgent and revelatory story about how the fusion of Big Finance and Big Tech requires "cloudmoney"—digital money underpinned by the banking sector—to replace physical cash. He dives beneath the surface of the global financial system to uncover a long-established lobbying infrastructure: an alliance of partners waging a covert war on cash. He explains the technical, political, and cultural differences between our various forms of money and shows how the cash system has been under attack for decades, as banking and tech companies promote a cashless society under the banner of progress.

Cloudmoney takes us to the front lines of a war for our wallets that is also about our freedom, from marketing strategies against cash to the weaponization of COVID-19 to push fintech platforms, and from there to the rise of the cryptocurrency rebels and fringe groups pushing back. It asks the most pressing questions:

Who benefits from a cashless society and who gets left behind?

Is the end of cash the end of true privacy?

And is our cloudmoney future closer than we think it is?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Nervous System
• 2. The War on Cash
• 3. The Giant in the Mountain
• 4. Digital Chips
• 5. The Bank-Chip Society
• 6. Big Brother. Big Bouncer. Big Butler
• 7. The Unnatural Progress of a ‘Rapidly Changing World’
• 8. Shedding and Re-skinning
• 9. Sherlock Holmes and the Strange Case of the Data Ghost
• 10. Clash of the Leviathans
• 11. A Paranormalist’s Guide to the Spectre of Bitcoin
• 12. The Political Tribes of Cyber-Kowloon
• 13. Raiding the Raiders
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author
• Also by Brett Scott
• Copyright
• About the Publisher