There seems to be an upcoming trend when it comes to the normalisation of crypto-currency with many people ( especially with the newer generation ) investing their time to learn and using their money to invest into crypto. Whether it is just to make some money on the side or if its because they feel more secure using crypto over cash there is no denying that the popularity of the currency has spiked and has become more mainstream over the past few years.
However cash is still a prominent way of purchasing items for the majority of peoples day to day life and is still very dominant when it comes to transactions but is it beneficial to keep using cash for the future?
Security
Because of how volatile the crypto market is people often question the security of using crypto as an alternative. I believe that this is because of the barriers that stop many people from easily accessing crypto, this means that for many to enter the cryptocurrency market they will need to educate themselves with how to trade well and also safely but with most crypto branches such as Binance it has been proven that trading on these platforms is very safe and secure meaning that the main issue for the general public is making sure they do not loose the money invested in an unstable crypto-currency. "crypto can be purchased, stored, and used safely - so long as the user follows best practices" according to "Early Bird,2022".
However cash for many people seems like the best way to keep money, some of the older generation keep cash because they don't trust banks but with everything becoming more digitalised having cash may be more of an inconvenience because you will have to always have to carry out the transactions in person which could have otherwise been done online. In my opinion cash does not have the same level of security that crypto offers this is due to the risk of loosing cash, misplacing it or even worse having money stolen so from my perspective security wise it is much safer to keep money and transactions done electronically in this day and age.
Trends
Although cryptocurrency has been around since 2008 many people have hopped on the wave quite recently. I believe the main culprit for this was bitcoins huge up rise with 1 bitcoin equating to over $20,000 USD which is an insane amount considering that it was worth nothing at all in 2008. Obviously once the general public see such a thing happen they will start paying more attention to crypto as a whole, this has led to many newer coins trying to recreate the same success that bitcoin had. Many coins like Ethereum have proven to be stable but many coins have not followed the same success, this is due to them not having a solid foundation and only thinking about making short term gains and capitalising on the trend of cryptocurrency, this has led to an increase in scams and pump and dump schemes which is when a insider group of people invest in one crypto coin to rise its price which leads to others investing and once it reaches peak the insider group all sell at once leading to other investors to suffer the cost of the fall in price. This is one of the major effects of the popularity in the cryptocurrency world and with it still being very new policies are still being put in place to prevent these type of things from happening.
The future
It is hard to predict the future but with crypto having much lower transaction fees and is a faster way of paying it is hard to deny that it could take over even online banking in the distant future, of course for this to be a possibility it will need an increase in businesses offering crypto as a form of transaction and currently that is not the case which is a main challenge for crypto to overcome in becoming more mainstream, currently there is still a lack of businesses using crypto as a form of transaction due to the lack of knowledge on the overall subject.
In conclusion crypto is still young, although its growth has been very explosive, it is still young meaning certain regulations still need to be created and the legal framework is changing by the year which means taking over cash as a main source of transactions could still be a long shot for crypto but only time will tell.