There is an invisible war taking place right now. And although you may not be aware of it, it’s a war that’s impacting you in a direct way. It’s a war on your wallet, a war on your bank account, a war on your money. But it’s not happening in the way you may think it. And it’s happening right beneath your nose.

Is the growing ascendance of digital money simply an organic evolution away from the purported inconveniences of physical cash? Or is this transition actually a nefarious, corporate-engineered, neo-enclosure of money by Big Finance and Big Tech?

In his latest book, Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets, author, journalist, and financial hacker Brett Scott lays out an extremely compelling case arguing that corporations are engineering an enclosure of money — transforming it into a completely digital form which they alone will control.

In this Conversation, Upstream takes a deep dive beneath the surface of the global financial system to explore the technical and political differences between various forms of money, why corporations are attacking physical cash and plotting to completely replace it with digital money, who will really benefit from a cashless society, and why the fight for ownership of our digital footprints is one of the most pressing battles of our time.

You can listen to the full Upstream Conversation below to dive deeper into this topic.