Bill Maurer
  • November 7, 2025

  • Bill Maurer, anthropology, law and IMTFI, dives into the history of cash in this piece with Business Insider (video)

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[5:05] Japan started printing its yen, made with the Mitsamada shrub, in the 1870s. “That’s really the time period when a lot of countries around the world started issuing paper currency. People are starting to organize themselves into what would become nation states.” That’s Bill Maurer [UC Irvine professor of anthropology and law, dean of social sciences, and director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion] who’s been studying currency for 25 years. “One of the ways that you advertise your existence as a nation state is through things like a flag or an anthem, but also banknotes, territorial currencies.” … "People hold onto cash because of its anonymity, because of its privacy, and also for populations that experienced wartime trauma, because it always works when the electricity goes out or the network goes down, your banknotes are always going to work." Paper notes have security advantages, too. “Any kind of note made out of an organic substrate has a particular kind of feel. And that’s useful because the way that most cash handlers detect counterfeits is by the touch, not so much by sight.” …"And people like it, in part, because it's part of an artistic heritage."... “It’s very important for a country’s security to have a well functioning cash cycle in case of conflict, trauma, hurricanes, floods, that kind of thing. So even if it were to become less cash dependent, which I don’t think that it would, the central bank is probably still going to encourage people to keep some cash on hand.”

Watch in full: https://youtu.be/hXYa4-yXp4s?si=FoptiRAvDMeq_adE 

 

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