WHO WILL MISS THE COINS WHEN THEY'RE GONE?

They gather unloved in jars and under cushions, unearthed only when laundry needs doing. They rattle in coat pockets, music to some ears and a nuisance to others. They sink into fountains and lurk in wells, a fortune in wishes but a nightmare to sort and count.

Coins are everywhere until they're nowhere, and at the moment they're hard to find. By upending normal habits, the pandemic has dropped them out of circulation and accelerated a trend toward cards, apps and other cashless payments that could eventually make coins obsolete.

China has plans for a digital currency, and the U.S. Federal Reserve is doing "research and experimentation." Facebook has a currency in the works, and Bitcoin's evangelists are still preaching. Millions of Americans are skipping right over coins by paying with their phones — or shopping on them.

"There's a battle for the future of money going on," said Alex Tapscott, a co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, a Canadian firm. Governments, banks, credit card companies and online communities are among the factions trying to change how people make payments, he said.

How the coronavirus sidelined coins
A funeral for cash has not yet been scheduled, but the pandemic has made it much easier to imagine a world without coins, and already reinvigorated the movement to get rid of pennies. For banks, credit card companies and some Bitcoin advocates, the demise of each unit of cash would be welcome news. For small businesses that rely on coins, it's a slow-rolling earthquake. For archaeologists and collectors, it's bittersweet at best and a tragedy at worst.

Convenience with a cost
While small businesses have had to adapt reluctantly to a cashless world, many tech firms, banks and credit card companies have pushed for one, said Jay Zagorsky, a professor at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University.

"The economy is bifurcating, sort of splitting in two parts, and there's one part that's taking a beating," he said.

The people saving pennies
Coins will always have defenders in curators and collectors like the 26,000 members of the American Numismatic Association. The group's education director, Rod Gillis, hopes they never stop circulating. "I would really hate for us to become a cashless society," he said. "I would hate for us to lose our historical perspective."

And coins have survived other inventions — paper bills, stock markets, E-ZPass — outlasting many of the monarchies, republics and empires they were made to hold together. Their value as artifacts is "wonderful," said Dr. Fleur Kemmers, an archaeologist at Goethe University Frankfurt. She called ancient coins "historic documents," passed down by people across centuries and continents as they haggled, hoarded and made their way through daily life. She said that in their design, material makeup and discovered locations, coins can reveal clues about culture, politics, religion, industry, trade and household life.

But Dr. Kemmers said that aside from their symbolism, she was "not that optimistic about the long-term future of coins." With one exception: "Commemorative coins might be something that will last."

To read the complete article, see:
Who Will Miss the Coins When They're Gone? (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/business/coin-shortage.html)

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