Leonid Bershidsky & Mark Whitehouse, Columnists

Cash Is More Popular Than Ever

People in the U.S., Europe and Japan prove cash isn’t dead yet. 

People seem to like them.

Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg
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Modern finance requires a lot of trust, and its digital future will demand still more. If, for example, electronic payments are to replace cash, people must be willing to believe that the bits of data traveling among phones, cards, terminals and blockchains actually represent something of value.

So will they be? Judging from their growing predilection for physical currency, maybe not.