In the 1990s, a trader could walk into a meeting in the morning and walk out by evening with a bag full of cash. No wire transfer. No digital receipt. Just bundles of dollars stacked on a table and a handshake.
This was the reality of doing business in post-Soviet Russia, Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia after communism collapsed. Banking systems that had existed for decades were being torn down and rebuilt overnight. Electronic transfers existed, but they were slow, unreliable, and widely distrusted for large private transactions. Cash was faster, simpler, and left no trail.
Finance workers, commodity traders, and brokers operating in those markets often had no choice but to deal in physical money. Stacks of banknotes in office drawers, gym bags full of dollars in car trunks, bundles rubber-banded and counted on kitchen tables. It was not unusual. It was Tuesday.
Among some young brokers and traders, it even became a kind of culture. Disposable cameras were cheap. Wealth was new. Posing behind a desk covered in cash was not just bragging, it was proof that you had survived the chaos and come out on top.
It was not Wall Street. It was wilder than that.
