$1 Billion That Nobody Wants (2011) | Hacker News Reader

$1 Billion That Nobody Wants (2011)

npr.org

35 pointsthunderbong45 comments

Amusingly enough I can’t get these coins at my bank without having them special order $8000 worth.

I just wanted a roll for vending machines.

In Ecuador the US $1 coin and US $0.50 coin are in wide circulation - as a tourist from the US I really enjoyed getting to use these coins to their full promise.

Ecuador also makes a $0.25 centavo coin which is the same size and weight as a U.S. quarter. You can’t change them practically at a bank, but they work in vending machines.

Funny. Just finished this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eine_Billion_Dollar

(2011)

Which is especially relevant given what happened next.

> On December 13, 2011, Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced that the minting of Presidential $1 coins for circulation would be suspended.[21] Future entries in the program, beginning with those of Chester A. Arthur, would be issued in reduced quantities, only for collectors. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_dollar_coins)

The mintage was literally cut from something like 75 million to 10 million.

I actually like paying with coins in other countries, but dollar coins are too big, and we need $5 $10 $20 coins too. I'd love to be able to leave my wallet at home sometimes and just stick a $20 coin or two in my pocket. I'm less likely to drop a coin than a folded or crumpled up bill in my pocket, but I'm way more likely to lose a coin in my pocket than a bill in my wallet.

There's no point to having both a wallet full of bills and cards and a pocket full of coins though.

Even a $2 coin would be a huge improvement.

To be honest as a European I always envy the US and their $1 bills. Its a hassle to always have to carry around all these €1 and €2 coins which one invariably receives by the end of the day.

I don't visit the USA often, but I've found $1 bills to be dirty and worn — it's much easier for vending machines to accept a coin.

If you don't like carrying excess coins, you need to hand some over when you pay. If the bill is €11.85, hand over €12 or €22 rather than €15 or €20.

How can you hand over €12 or €22 if you're not holding excess coins?

Up to €4 (in 1s and 2s) is not excess.

Depends on your definition of excess I guess.

They can be very dirty thats true, but i just dont like carrying large amounts of coins. They all end up in a huge box in my home at the end of the day. I’d rather have some €2 bills. Anyway, Im paying much more by card now these days so this issue is going away slowly.

Today for a 3,30€ bus fare I handed over 4,40€. Lightening my pocket of coins is simple enough, but for physical transaction efficiency it assumes that both customer and recipient can do simple math in their heads. Your local educational system may or may not provide appropriate guarantees of this.

I used to (20+ years ago, now) buy a few rolls of dollar coins a week from my bank. Amusingly, they added them to their currency order just for me - the bank manager informally made me promise I'd keep asking for them - that's how low the demand was. I enjoyed them for parking, and vending machines, and buying coffee. Even at the time, however, I thought they'd made a mistake by not making them $2 coins, instead.

For the currencies which I am most familiar with:

* The largest 'normal' British coin is worth 2 GBP (~2.50 USD), with the smallest note (in common circulation) being 5 GBP (~6.35 USD). * The largest Euro coin is worth 2 EUR (2.18 USD), smallest note 5 EUR (5.45 USD).

However it's becoming increasing irrelevant for me personally - on the rare occasions I'm required to pay by cash I tend to just put the change into my pocket, and deal with it when I eventually come to wash the clothes.

Making any changes to currencies at this stage in time doesn't quite feel like rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic yet, but sounds like you could burn a lot of political will for little advantage.

Changing the coins could be justified as keeping them relevant for the future, otherwise they become irrelevant through inflation.

When ½p coins were introduced with decimalization, a pint of milk cost 5p — the smallest coin bought 57ml of milk.

With milk now 90p/pt, you now get only 6ml for the smallest coin. We could reasonably scrap 1p, 2p and 5p coins.

I live in the UK and have one wrinkled £10 note and a pound coin, both for emergencies. I almost never use cash. What is stopping the US moving to that?

.. the desire to not have every single transaction traceable in a society where such activities can be easily exploitable by all and sundry to screw you financially, forever .. ?

Yeah, I think you're going to need to break this hyperbole down a little bit for everyone.

With current electronic transactions all your movements are tracked and stored, and copied (in Europe) to a large number of entities - which do not have credentials for being (en)trusted. That is a "you MUST be joking" scenario.

Criminals have something to hide. Subjects have nothing to hide. Men have everything to hide.

Wasn't there the example of the Canadian government freezing people's bank accounts for participating in the trucker protests?

You might (possibly correctly) say that your country is nowhere near Canada on that spectrum, but things can change over time.

Well there are people who still always want to pay in cash, albeit with a sigh from behind the counter, but they are often even more grey haired and doddery than me.

And I can see exactly where my money has been spent down to the last coffee.

Those who have no choice than to pay by cash are the most disadvantaged in society, and my greatest concern is for them.

Can you explain where you're coming from?

Is it crime?

Or just a desire to have some resilience from having banks accidentally screw over your entire live just because Mercury is in retrograde.

Its crime, yes its a factor - but its also the fact that I don't need the bank analyzing whether I'm buying too much of something they consider an indicator for poor financial security, and then using that data in their interest calculations.

That does happen, and its not okay, but happy little decadent consumers agree to it because, convenience.

But we have moved to that. I don’t remember the last time I used cash. Maybe to pay at a farm stand in the country.

Desire for basic privacy and freedom?

I'm not in US but I refuse to shop anywhere that doesn't take cash.

Why is it that USers don't prefer $1 coins to $1 bills? When I visited the US, the $1 bills were quite the annoyance for me.

PS - In Israel, the highest-value coin is 10 NIS, which are about $3, and the lowest-valued note is 20 NIS, about $6.

Coins are basically dead in the US, and paper money is halfway dead too. It’ll all be digital soon.

Why don't you all just move into prisons and be done with it?

> In 2005, Congress decided that a new series of dollar coins should be minted to engage the public. These coins would bear the likeness of every former president, starting with George Washington. There would be a new one every quarter. So, far, the Mint has produced coins through the 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant.

Oh no, we're on course to make a coin with Trump's face on it.

Bear the likeness doesn't necessarily mean a face. I'd go with that scene of him walking up the stairs to air force one with the toilet paper stuck to one shoe. Or him playing tennis in too-short shorts. Those would still qualify the accurate likeness requirement.

Andrew Jackson is on the $20 and he’s basically the 19th century version of Trump

While we should replace him with someone who actually deserves to be on US currency I still think it’s absolutely hilarious the guy who hated having national banks is the face of one of the most widely used federal reserve notes. It would be like having a Henry Ford Jewish school

I find the same thing funny about John Wayne Airport- dude hated the airport when he was alive and lobbied tons of money to have them change the way planes take off so they wouldn’t buzz his mansion and bother him. I’m sure he rolls in his grave every time a plane doesn’t pull up sharply enough and mildly annoys a rich white person who bought a house in the takeoff path of the airport

Born in the 18th century, president in the 19th.

Fixed

> and he’s basically the 19th century version of

Maybe we should leave that to full-time historians, because I have never seen attributed to Jackson a number of critical traits attributed to 45th - by his own supporters.

Edit: maybe we should read this text, to be aligned at least with the accusations:

  Edwin L. Battistella, "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels - Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump" (Oxford University Press)

> ø Features over 500 insults in a sweeping journey through two and a half centuries of the ridicule and revilement Americans have directed at their presidents; ø Puts today's political climate in perspective by tracing invective back to the nation's earliest days; ø Explains the historical context and linguistic origins of the insults, providing a sense of the history of the presidency and of the English language

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dangerous-crooked-sc...

Well, "John Wayne" is the stage name. One presumes that any coin would use a person's legal name. John Wayne was actually named Marion Wayne. I would understand the naming of the airport as a tribute to the character rather than the actor.

> the character rather than the actor

They renamed the airport after he died, in his honour, as a prominent figure and a neighbour.

So, both the individual and the persona: past his youth, he had almost exactly the face of somebody used to tolerate soaring planes when trying to collect some rest.

> John Wayne was actually named Marion Wayne

No, Marion Morrison was John Wayne's real name. (Marion Robert Morrison to be more specific.)

The article didn't seem to specify metallic requirements, maybe the Trump coins could be made out wood - then the habit of biting a coin to verify could come back into vogue.

In a time where cnc mills are abundant, that would make for some interesting business opportunities.

Dentists would see an uptick in business too.

Mount Rushmore is more selective, but when dealing with "any" history we have to deal with passages and embarrassments - in general, "natural" dire lack of perfection recorded in time.

Only hours ago I learnt that Pierce won over his opponent in the electoral vote 254 to 42: quite overwhelming, in perspective. And Buchanan had been a remarkable officer in his career - though again not perfect (he had e.g. a few episodes of scolding from the perfectionist Polk).

The plan explicitly stated that only a president who had been dead at least two years would be honoured, so the programme officially ended in 2016.

Subsequently a special bill permitted the creation of a George H. W. Bush dollar in 2020.

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