The End of Money – David Wolman

The age of paper money and metal coins is coming to a close. “The End of Money” shines the spotlight on this revolution – and the people, technologies, and trends that are powering it. “The End of Money” is the story of hard currency – its history, conflicts, champions, detractors, and eventual demise.

As the role of bills and coins in our everyday lives and in the economy lessens, real money is becoming not merely an abstraction, but an abstraction of an abstraction. What will an increasingly cashless future mean for society, and for the people whose careers are linked to the production, management, and collection of hard currency? This is their story, but it is also our story – because the fate of real money impacts all of our wallets.

The tale spans from Britain’s Master of the Mint, Isaac Newton, to massive zinc mines in Western Australia. David Wolman delivers an everyman-friendly explanation of the monetary policies espoused by titans like Jefferson, Keynes, Friedman, and Greenspan, while exploring the wider implications of PayPal’s next-generation payment innovations. It examines the role of Las Vegas casinos as drivers of coin production, delves into Federal Reserve branch banks full of cash, showcases the boon in mobile phone banking in developing countries, and looks at the Secret Service’s ongoing battle with counterfeiters.

The book zooms from places like South Korea, where cell phone scans are used to pay for just about everything, to fMRI laboratories, where brain scientists are studying our emotional relationship to cash. From Bretton Woods and e-bullion businesses, to Andrew Jackson’s “Specie Circular” of 1836, “The End of Money” takes readers on a cross-cultural journey into the world of hard currency – and peers into a future without it.