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Comment by TedDoesntTalk | Hacker News Reader

$5 billion in 1964 is about $45 trillion today. so, uh, yeah, 2022 dollars. https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1964?amount=50000...

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The link says "$5,000,000,000 in 1964 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $44,968,064,516.13 today", which is $45 billion.

Considering that the entire revenue for IBM in 1964 was $3.2 billion (1964 money), spending $5 billion on a project (over several years) was certainly a "bet the company" move.

The link your provided says $45 billion, not trillion.

$45Tn is half the GDP of the whole planet (~$80Tn).

I should know. Law enforcement were trying to indict me for $100Tn in currency fraud. I wanted to point out to them that this was higher than the GDP of Planet Earth, but I don't think they would have understood what GDP is.

Story time?

I was arrested. In my wallet was a $100Tn bill. Law enforcement send it to the State crime lab for analysis. Lab report says it is the most sophisticated piece of currency forgery they have ever seen. It checks 8 of their 9 boxes (it's been eight years since I saw the report) which I remember some were: correct paper, correct ink, metal strip, hologram, dots.. I don't remember the rest. I can't remember which one it failed.

They finally decided not to follow-through on the prosecution for it. I guess someone eventually realized that:

a) It was a real bank note, not a forgery

b) It wasn't US currency as they had believed, but a note from Zimbabwe:

https://www.banknoteworld.com/zimbabwe-currency/100-trillion...

Wow.

I'm struggling to imagine multiple professional law enforcement staff closely examining it and not noticing that it makes no claims to be US currency.

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