Cloudmoney

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

By: Brett Scott

Narrated by: Coleman Pedigo

Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

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?

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Brett Scott (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

A must listen

The apparent movement to a cashless society is not inevitable nor is a good trend. The narratives being given in support of this “trend” are at best incomplete. Essentially it is a merger between large platform tech and big financial institutions to get a piece of every last transaction.

Well presented and balanced review of global financial networks

The author presents a well argued concern for the decline of cash in various societies. Touching on the large influence from mega corporations and central banks, he shows how our privacy and freedoms are at risk by moving into a world where every purchase we make is monitored. This is not a pro crypto book for anyone looking to simply reinforce their current views. Instead the author presents some criticisms of several monetary systems while promoting cash, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and other blockchain technologies.

A Must-Read

Outstanding treatment of the subject matter and highly engaging from start to finish. Not too heavy a lift for those new to these subjects, but full of enough connections and clever insights that even people with some expertise will find the wheels in their head spinning.

one of the best books you will ever read.

i loved this. the author is amazing and brilliant. Vital listening. This is absolutely necessary to understand the fintech assault on our lives.

Suspicions and grievances instead of arguments

"Cloud Money" tells people with fears of overreach and powerlessness: You're not alone. The author has identified "cash" as worthy of preservation, threatened by an ominous _them_. _They_ never bodes well for journalism.

_They_ encompass credit card companies, banks, central banks, big tech. Rather than opposing a new standard being adopted for profit reasons and accepted for convenience, the book goes to great lengths to imply darker motives, such as disdain for the poor up and outright racism founded in colonial roots.

The arguments are one-sided and veer into personal preferences and anecdotes. See this typical quote, criticizing all financial inclusion initiatives without questioning why they'd support digital payments - arguments replaced by an unrelated grievance and insinuating it's the norm:

"Almost all financial inclusion initiatives present digital technology as a great leap forward, that will enable unbanned to get banked. Not mentioned, however, is that the economic risk-return equation is only half of a bigger equation: while banks may not like poor people unless they can dealing with them profitable, poor people had no practical reason to like banks either. One part of the reason is practical: Historically, the average size of their transaction was so small as to make writing a cheque or requesting bank transfers an unnecessary or even embarrassing process, especially in situations where they might only buy essential goods within a small radius from where they live. Another part is political: I was a boy at the tail end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, notorious for its discrimination. At this time, my parents opened a special children's account for me at the "Standard Bank", one of the country's most prominent financial institutions. I remember the branches full of white people, while the black people stood outside. Gradually, as South Africa moved into its post-Apartheid phase, the number of black customers increased. But those who were illiterate were treated with condescension. For an elderly Zulu man, who had spent his formative years as a laborer for a South African mining corporation, there was no reason to feel trusting towards financial institutions. This same pattern is found the world over."

One star for good explanations - Scott is a gifted user of metaphors. Unfortunately, he uses them neither objectively nor constructively.

By glazing over why the less fortunate and unbanked _choose_ digital payment systems (or declaring that they are being hoodwinked by "the system"), the book ultimately loses all justification.