Most transactions used to happen in person, because value could not move without paper or a handshake.
Before networks, people shopped in physical stores, visited brick-and-mortar banks, and commonly used cash or checks. The bank’s marble lobby was not decoration; it was an argument that your money was safe.
Now people shop, pay bills, deposit checks, and transfer money online — and they also face scams, hacking, and system outages. The same connection that lets you deposit a check at midnight lets someone on another continent try your password at the same hour.
Trust migrated from architecture to protocols. Convenience and attack surface scale together — every new thing you can do remotely is a new thing that can be done to you remotely. The trade is worth it, but only if you know you are making it.
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