From the scent of cash to the whiff of cashless

Money, they told me, smells of sweat and blood, tastes like victory and feels like slipping sand, always in a state of motion. Our grandfathers constantly reiterated their turmoil, their labour, and struggles to earn the life we have today. For them money was earned assiduously, with good means, in ways involving manual and physical work, with the sweat of one’s brow. Yet for them money’s true essence was relishing the sleep after a day’s hard work.

Along came the next generation, that of our father’s and with it came a new notion of money. For them, money gave you respect and identity, besides a life (style). It must be approbated, saved, re-invested and should be held on for long. To make it, you must have a skill, a college degree, lots of determination and no rest. You must start young; follow the procedure, adept to the set formats, be diligent and conscientious and just in case you are lucky, you might end up in a government job, with a pension safeguarding the declining years, when health, vigour and mental faculties deteriorate.

Then popped the millennials, the Gen-z’ers, the digital natives that a recent study suggests have an attention span of eight seconds and spend most their hours on the smartphone. This generation saw the genesis of a new form of money, a class of currency that’s encrypted, digital and termed as crypto currency. This form of currency is founded on the infrastructure called block chain technology; it is a digital and de-centralised ledger that records payments in a safe and efficient manner, while utilising encryption to generate money and verify transactions. Their banks may be situated on a chilly island in north Atlantic, or in a deserted corner in Kazakhstan or Siberia, yet they work day and night through high-powered computers to solve complex mathematical equations on a competitive basis to verify and log transactions.

This evolution of a brand-new concept of money, so volatile, is not for the faint-hearted. It has now created a generation working in the comfort of their settee, in their snug loungewear, with their favourite movie in the backdrop, operating the right moves with the swipe of a finger on the 7-inch screen in their palm. Their money is in their digital wallets, their investments are in digital banks, and they intend to hold onto their money too, which in the language of crypto investors is phrased as ‘Hold Onto Dear Life (HODL)”.

They work on the go, through a powerful electronic device they carry in their pockets; they primarily won’t require an office space, or any form of commuting, forget a day of travail. Yet, they feel contented, and avail themselves a good sleep after a day’s cogitation, for this is their value of money.

This substantial transition makes one wonder: Does money still smell of sweat and blood? Or just high-powered servers and heat exhausts?

THIS GENERATION SAW THE GENESIS OF A NEW FORM OF MONEY, A CLASS OF CURRENCY THAT’S ENCRYPTED, DIGITAL AND TERMED AS CRYPTO CURRENCY