1 in 10 New Yorkers Doesn’t Have a Bank Account

Note well, this is a major underground sector that doesn't use bitcoins. In fact, I don't see how bitcoins would help this group, other than making it easier for them to be tracked, there is nothing that bitcoin does that good hold cash doesn't do for them--in a more private manner.

NyPo has the details:

“More and more people in New York we talk to today than ever before are unbanked,” said financial counselor David Flores of GreenPath Debt Solutions. “We call them the liquid society.”

The unbanked are a growing category of New Yorkers — almost one in 10 households in New York state, according to the most recent FDIC survey — who have no checking or savings account at a bank. And the category of New Yorkers who conduct some or all of their financial transactions outside the banking system is 29 percent, almost 1 percent higher than the total for all US households....

The numbers of unbanked, meanwhile, are expanding in New York’s inner city with its large concentration of immigrants. The numbers are especially high among minorities and low-income households, according to Flores...

In a study last year, New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs showed stunning disparities among the unbanked in the city’s immigrant communities. Only 5 percent of Chinese respondents in the US less than six years on average were still unbanked. Yet Ecuadorian and Mexican respondents, in the US nearly 12 years and 10 years on average, respectively, were hugely unbanked at 35 percent and 57 percent.
“The demographics will determine how New Yorkers are saving their money,” Flores said. “The more affluent individuals may have savings accounts, the less affluent in the inner city will have their money under the mattress — and your trust or distrust of the bank will also determine how you save.”