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Comment by ur-whale | Hacker News Reader

One very interesting sentence in that document is the "100'000 USDC token blacklisted"

If you ever thought govt-backed cryptos and centralized tokens like USDC were a good idea, ask yourself this:

Could a stack of greenbacks ever be "blacklisted" (I mean, people have certainly tried with various "tricks")?

One of the nice property of money as we've known it so far was fungibility.

With govt-backed (e-dollar) and/or centralized cryptos (USDC), much like the woolly mammoth the whole notion will soon be extinct.

Decentralized ZKP-powered coins FTW.

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> Could a stack of greenbacks ever be "blacklisted"

Yes. Bill counters at banks capture serial numbers and associate them with your account when you make a cash deposit. Each night the serials are sent to a MCP database where they are checked against a hotlist entered by law enforcement across the country. The bank won't reject the bills on the spot, but depositing too many of the wrong ones will earn you a visit.

True, but you can still spend them at the grocery store.

Tracing cash bills is a complicated affair beyond a couple of transactional hops.

The kidnapper/murderer Ferdi Elsas was found via bills spent at the grocery store.

The US issued currency during WWII with that explicit plan-- notes counterstamped "HAWAII" in huge letters, or with different colour seals.

If Hawaii fell, or a large stash of notes intended for overseas use were diverted, they could easily demonetize them.

The reason it's not done on a more precise level is probably a UX issue-- you can easily remember "The $10 notes with yellow seals are void" but roadcasting and getting understanding of thousands of "$10 note Series 2024 serial number QL34567846A is void" is infeasible.

> Could a stack of greenbacks ever be "blacklisted"?

Copying from an older comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26812598):

I saw something like this happen when I was younger (this was pre-web, in the 80s or 90s, so I unfortunately haven't been able to find any online references to it): there was a big bank heist, and the stolen banknotes were new notes which hadn't been put into circulation yet. The ranges of their serial numbers were widely distributed by the press, and for instance cashiers at supermarkets were supposed to verify whether the serial numbers of the banknotes they received matched any of these ranges (since the banknotes hadn't been put into circulation, they were treated similar to counterfeit money: they officially didn't have any value). The country's currency has changed since then (it was the hyperinflation times), so that whole banknote series is no longer valid nowadays.

> Could a stack of greenbacks ever be "blacklisted"

Deposit a whole stack from a bank robbery and find out.

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