Cloudmoney
Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets
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Narrated by:
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Coleman Pedigo
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By:
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Brett Scott
About this listen
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 PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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- How to Get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots, and Big Data
- By: Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig, Ben Pring
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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What to Do When Machines Do Everything is a guidebook to succeeding in the next generation of the digital economy. When systems running on artificial intelligence can drive our cars, diagnose medical patients, and manage our finances more effectively than humans, it raises profound questions on the future of work and how companies compete.
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Assumes that machine learning will grow very slow
- By Nathan Burnham on 05-06-17
By: Malcolm Frank, and others
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Postcapitalism
- A Guide to Our Future
- By: Paul Mason
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone profound changes - economic cycles that veer from boom to bust - from which it has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason's Postcapitalism argues that we are on the brink of a change so big and so profound that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system within which entire societies function, will mutate into something wholly new.
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some good ideas...
- By "ge-ko" on 06-19-16
By: Paul Mason
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Matchmakers
- The New Economics of Multisided Platforms
- By: Richard Schmalensee, David S. Evans
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Many of the most dynamic public companies, from Alibaba to Facebook to Visa, and the most valuable start-ups, such as Airbnb and Uber, are matchmakers that connect one group of customers with another group of customers. Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and ride-sharing apps do the same for drivers and riders.
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Repetition of one business all the time !
- By Razi T. on 06-03-20
By: Richard Schmalensee, and others
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The Mobile Wave
- How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything
- By: Michael Saylor
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Mobile Wave argues that the changes brought by mobile computing are so big and widespread that it’s impossible for us to see it all, even though we are all immersed in it. Saylor explains that the current generation of mobile smart phones and tablet computers has set the stage to become the universal computing platform for the world. In the hands of billions of people and accessible anywhere and anytime, mobile computers are poised to become an appendage of the human being and an essential tool for modern life.
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Commonplace knowledge peppered with buzzwords
- By Amazon Customer on 10-22-13
By: Michael Saylor
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The World Is Flat
- Further Updated and Expanded
- By: Thomas L. Friedman
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development in the first few years of the twenty-first century? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations?
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If you like cliches...
- By Jonathan Shultz on 09-08-07
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No company embodied American ingenuity, innovation, and industrial power more spectacularly and more consistently than the General Electric Company. GE once developed and manufactured many of the inventions we take for granted today, nearly everything from the lightbulb to the jet engine. GE also built a cult of financial and leadership success envied across the globe and became the world’s most valuable and most admired company. But even at the height of its prestige and influence, cracks were forming in its formidable foundation.
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Sold Out
- How Broken Supply Chains, Surging Inflation, and Political Instability Will Sink the Global Economy
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Today, your favorite products are missing from store shelves, caught in supply chain limbo somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. But what does this supply chain disruption look like six months, or even three years, from now? While we hope that post-pandemic recovery will absolve these issues, the reality is that digital currency, meme stonks, and social media can’t solve the age-old problem of producing and moving physical goods across oceans and continents. Jim Rickards argues that consumer frustration is only the tip of a large, menacing iceberg that threatens global economic collapse.
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Hard to like this. Book is really Dull.
- By horoscopy on 12-06-22
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Summer Snow
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A new volume of poetry from Robert Hass is always an event. In Summer Snow, Hass further affirms his position as one of our most highly regarded living poets. Hass’s trademark careful attention to the natural world, his subtle humor, and the delicate but wide-ranging eye he casts on the human experience are fully on display in his masterful collection. Touching on subjects including the poignancy of loss, the serene and resonant beauty of nature, and the mutability of desire, Hass exhibits his virtuosic abilities and expansive intellect, and tremendous listenability.
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Beautiful aching poems
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The Weather Machine
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The weather is the foundation of our daily lives. It’s a staple of small talk, the app on our smartphones, and often the first thing we check each morning. Yet behind these quotidian interactions is one of the most expansive machines human beings have ever constructed - a triumph of science, technology, and global cooperation. But what is this "weather machine" and who created it?
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Overall boring
- By Anonymous User on 08-03-20
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Conversations
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Steve Reich is a living legend in the world of contemporary classical music. As a leader of the minimalist movement in the 1960s, his works have become central to the musical landscape worldwide, influencing generations of younger musicians, choreographers and visual artists. He has explored non-Western music and American vernacular music from jazz to rock, as well as groundbreaking music and video pieces. He toured the world with his own ensemble and his compositions are performed internationally by major orchestras and ensembles.
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Stunningly thoughtful!
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The Accommodation
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The powerful, long-repressed classic of Dallas history that examines the violent and suppressed history of race and racism in the city. Written by longtime Dallas political journalist Jim Schutze, formerly of the Dallas Times Herald and Dallas Observer and currently columnist at D Magazine, The Accommodation follows the story of Dallas from slavery through the civil rights movement and the city’s desegregation efforts in the 1950s and ‘60s.
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Floored
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No company embodied American ingenuity, innovation, and industrial power more spectacularly and more consistently than the General Electric Company. GE once developed and manufactured many of the inventions we take for granted today, nearly everything from the lightbulb to the jet engine. GE also built a cult of financial and leadership success envied across the globe and became the world’s most valuable and most admired company. But even at the height of its prestige and influence, cracks were forming in its formidable foundation.
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Much better than other GE books
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Sold Out
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Today, your favorite products are missing from store shelves, caught in supply chain limbo somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. But what does this supply chain disruption look like six months, or even three years, from now? While we hope that post-pandemic recovery will absolve these issues, the reality is that digital currency, meme stonks, and social media can’t solve the age-old problem of producing and moving physical goods across oceans and continents. Jim Rickards argues that consumer frustration is only the tip of a large, menacing iceberg that threatens global economic collapse.
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Hard to like this. Book is really Dull.
- By horoscopy on 12-06-22
By: James Rickards
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Beautiful aching poems
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Spam Nation
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Risky topic, but Br. Krebs hits it out of the park
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Naked in the Rideshare
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From Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, the youngest comedy writers ever for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and masterminds behind the viral 2018 Yale graduation speech, comes a hilarious collection of short stories taking on coming-of-age, memes, sex, politics, relationships, and Goop, with satire, self-deprecation, and utter irreverence.
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I thought it was supposed to be funny, kind of weak, overall.
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Some Assembly Required
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Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.
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Interesting but thin. ANNOYING narration
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The Filthy Thirteen
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Since World War II, the American public has become fully aware of the exploits of the 101st Airborne Division, the paratroopers who led the Allied invasions into Nazi-held Europe. But within the ranks of the 101st, a sub-unit attained legendary status at the time, its reputation persisting among veterans over the decades. Primarily products of the Dustbowl and the Depression, the Filthy13 grew notorious, even within the ranks of the elite 101st. Never ones to salute an officer, or take a bath, this squad became singular within the Screaming Eagles.
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Best WW2 book ever
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The Road to Unafraid
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An excellent story of personal strength and character
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By: Jeff Struecker
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The Angel and the Assassin
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Until recently, microglia were thought to be merely the brain’s housekeepers, helpfully removing damaged cells. But a recent groundbreaking discovery revealed them to be capable of terrifying Jekyll and Hyde behavior. When triggered - and anything that stirs up the immune system in the body can activate microglia - they can morph into destroyers, impacting a wide range of issues from memory problems and anxiety to depression and Alzheimer’s. Under the right circumstances, however, microglia can be coaxed back into being angelic healers.
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A Magnus Opus for Microglia
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Hooked
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Empowering Read
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Probable Impossibilities
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Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman explores these questions and more - from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang.
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Mumbler
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American Cheese
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Joe Berkowitz loves cheese. Or at least he thought he did. After stumbling upon an artisanal tasting at an upscale cheese shop one Valentine’s Day, he realized he’d hardly even scratched the surface. These cheeses were like nothing he had ever tasted - a visceral drug-punch that reverberated deliciousness - and they were from America. He felt like he was being let in a great cosmic secret, and instantly he was in love.
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Interesting and a Little Disappointing
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This America of Ours
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In late-1940s America, few writers commanded attention like Bernard DeVoto. Alongside his brilliant wife and editor, Avis, DeVoto was a firebrand of American liberty, free speech, and perhaps our greatest national treasure: public lands. But when a corrupt band of lawmakers, led by Senator Pat McCarran, sought to quietly cede millions of acres of national parks and other western lands to logging, mining, and private industry, the DeVotos entered the fight of their lives.
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Fascinating history of a great conservationist
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By Water Beneath the Walls
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How did the US Navy - the branch of the US military tasked with patrolling the oceans - ever manage to produce a unit of raiders trained to operate on land? And how, against all odds, did that unit become one of the world’s most elite commando forces, routinely striking thousands of miles from the water on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, even Central Africa?
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Extra. Ordinary.
- By Anonymous User on 12-15-21
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Magdalena
- River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia
- By: Wade Davis
- Narrated by: Wade Davis, Xandra Uribe
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Travelers often become enchanted with the first country that captures their hearts and gives them license to be free. For Wade Davis, it was Colombia. Now in a masterly new book, Davis tells of his travels on the mighty Magdalena, the river that made possible the nation. Along the way, he finds a people who have overcome years of conflict precisely because of their character, informed by an enduring spirit of place, and a deep love of a land that is home to the greatest ecological and geographical diversity on the planet.
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A must read for colombians
- By Rolando Ruiz on 01-12-21
By: Wade Davis
What listeners say about Cloudmoney
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ronald F Geary
- 10-03-22
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.
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- Kindle Customer
- 08-13-24
wow!
This should be a must for every high school student now and every adult. The dive into monetary systems was an eye opener. Gives one a foundation.
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- Kadmonster
- 07-10-22
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.
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- Steven D. Grumbine
- 08-20-22
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.
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- Adam
- 08-08-22
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.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-09-24
Entertaining and educational
I love the author’s writing style. Keeps me engaged. Haven’t finished yet but it’s already a great book in my eyes.
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- Holger
- 03-09-23
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.
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1 person found this helpful