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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that they withdraw them officially; the US has replaced its currency a number of times (the "new swelled head" 100s, 50s, 20s, etc) but the old ones continue to be accepted basically everywhere. You can even find silver certificates wandering around, though they can't be redeemed for silver anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_certificate_(United_Sta...

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Would be difficult logistically to make a comparable move

"Federal Reserve Board staff estimate that over $950 billion in U.S. dollar banknotes were held by foreigners at the end of the first quarter of 2021, roughly half of total U.S. dollar banknotes outstanding."

[0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/the-...

What pushes the bank of england to such an aggressive and obnoxious policy?

Is there massive, perfect counterfeiting of existing banknotes?

I think the notes don’t last that long. I kept a 10 pound note in my wallet for a few years and it got destroyed far more quickly than US dollar bills. The paper just isn’t as good. I think the notes age out quite quickly.

American "paper" money is almost a cloth, and surprisingly durable.

I didn’t actually realize that old 10 GBP paper note is now worthless except to the BoE until reading this. Sigh.

Another example of physical savings in fiat paper being demonetized away by the state.

> Another example of physical savings in fiat paper being demonetized away by the state.

This is the reason why people joke about storing money in your mattress. You aren't supposed to do it.

You aren't supposed to do it because the state can't exercise veto power over cash transactions without due process.

Cash is useful and powerful, so it benefits bankers and politicians to render stockpiles useless periodically.

Actually the reason is much simpler. The government borrows money into existence. It has to eventually pay that money back. If you keep your cash under a mattress for all eternity then those debts can't be paid back because money is not returning from the private sector to the public sector. This also true for private debt, but it is particularly comical with public debt as all the money stored under a mattress has to be replenished to maintain a sufficient amount of currency in circulation.

Imagine it as if you are the government and acting as a dairy farmer and your cows are constantly fleeing onto private land. You can't get those cows back, instead you breed new cows. Since no cows return from the private lands and there is a constant stream of escaping cows, private lands are being flooded by cows. People complain about the government printing too many cows, devaluing the value of their existing cows.

You can see, this whole scheme is just a very backwards implemented debt jubilee in an environment where an actual debt jubilee would lead to pitchforks coming from the rich.

Eg system requires rehypothication of private debt to sustain itself.

If there are 'too many' of my cows on your land, my cows magically get smaller and the size of your cows on my land get bigger.

You can see, car analogies are bad enough.

It's value is to the person accepting it. £1 notes are worth more than £1, at least the last time I looked.

As mentioned in the article, these notes can be exchanged at a bank or post office. Those out of circulation can be exchanged at the BoE.

That’s great if you are in the UK, which I am not.

How does it make a difference? Presumably they've always been near worthless where you are anyway?

But that doesn't explain why they would put an expiration date on the existing bills.

They want to know who has the cash.

Since apparently they've done it a number of times before I assume everyone's used to it, and yes, I suspect counterfeiting is the main drive.

The US hasn't felt the need to enact that measure even with things like the supposed North Korean "superdollars".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar

I think it's more to prevent you from sitting on a mountain of cash the government is unaware of. Generational money, laundering and the like. Forces you to admit to all your cash or lose it. It smells pretty evil and totalitarian to me.

It's similar to the demonization in India in 2016 where the goal was to force people to declare their piles of black money. People don't always declare things correctly for tax purposes, and black money leads to other parallel economies (terrorism, trafficking, etc). In modern times it also encourages people to switch to digital payments rather than handling cash, something which makes tracing money easier in general.

Note that it didn't end very well for India. The initial claims are conveniently forgotten and people just suffered. More than 99% of the currency got returned anyway, contradicting government's claims.

Note that I didn't comment on the outcome, only the intended purpose. I suggest reading the demonization wikipedia article for more examples if the India example doesn't satisfy you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender#Demonetization

It has little in common with the Indian situation, since the Bank of England will exchange these notes indefinitely. Other banks will usually also accept them (at least for their customers) for several years.

It's routine, it's happened to 13 notes since 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_England_%C2%A320_note

It smells pretty evil and totalitarian to me to force people to wait generations until they get to work again. Imagine if we just did away with the handwaving and just wrote "ownership of this bill turns another human into your debt slave for eternity until you spend it". Maybe then it would occur to people why there is e.g. inflation rate targeting.

Inflation hurts the poor the most, or is that what you are saying?

Inflation hurts people who are least able to negotiate wage increases the best, yes. This is why it tends to be bad for the less well off. It's great for professionals with mortgages; it also tends to be great for people with hereditary wealth, since that's often tied up in land and businesses.

However this has a lot more to do with the supply of oil and gas than the number of banknotes in circulation.

There are a lot of things that might be considered totalitarian about the UK, but this isn't one of them.

One of the few remaining cases where the USA is truly the best in the world. Full backward compatibility for your currency is an awesome thing.

I guess these days it's kind of an expression of strength that the US has the resources to hunt down and stop counterfeiters, and pursue them through the world's financial systems if necessary.

Meanwhile, given that the UK is reportedly bringing back imperial measures [1], they will probably do something silly like deprecate another set of existing coinage and bring back shillings.

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[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-wants-revive-imperi...

It isn't full. If you show up with $100k of 80s-era Benjamins you will quickly realize they are not quite as fungible as you think.

Are they legal tender or not? I don't care if some picky person doesn't want to take them, that can also happen for other reasons like them not having change or such.

They are legal tender. They are not fully backward compatible.

If you show up to a store with a stack of old notes, this will look very suspicious even if they are “legal tender.”

Banks usually send old notes back to the Fed when they are found. They will notice an increase in old notes being returned and investigate as well.

So you might get away with this for a short amount of time.

Not if you consider the fact that the USA has 10x the rate of counterfeit notes: 1/4,000[0] Vs 1/40,000[1]. Obviously there are other factors too but this is likely one of the reasons for deprecating old notes like this.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_United_States_cu...

[1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/banknote

I in no way can see pre decimalization currency returning, it was highly complex, and has been gone since the 60's. The only ones who have working knowledge of it are pensioners.

Suppose I buy 3 stone, 5 pounds, 8 ounces of tomatoes priced at 4 shillings per pound. How much do I have to pay?

Suppose I use 1 stone, 12 pounds and 10 ounces in a (large) ratatouille. What weight of tomatoes do I have left?

Nah: imperial isn't coming back. The big food market in the centre of the city sells small fruit and veg in plastic bowls 'a pound a bowl' is the tarrif and the quantity in the bowl changes according to price. Larger items (cauliflowers) are priced typically by number so 2 for £1.50 or whatever.

That's a lot of tomatoes. I'm surprised you could find enough pickers to pick them.

You might see meat and dry goods being sold in pounds, like the states does, but like, I cannot imagine going back to 240 pence to the GBP, just inflation alone.

I think that works out to 9 pounds, 10 schillings, and like 3 pence however for the tomatoes.

You can have imperial without the stone though.

Yes, I think the decimal 1p is on the way out - at least one coffee bar in town is pricing their wares to one decimal place of pounds. Let alone the old penny (1/240th of a pound).

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