Uncut Currency
usmint.gov
usmint.gov
Fun fact about these — when the treasury first issued these, many people decided to cut them into odd off-center pieces and sell the resulting notes as miscut errors.
Once that started happening, the treasury (BEP to be specific) very quickly changed the serial numbers so they’re all very recognizable as having come from an uncut sheet. I didn’t check the latest for all denominations, but I know for $1 bills they all start with 99.
So if you see a “miscut dollar error” for sale on eBay or the like, always check the serial. If it starts with 99 then it’s just someone who had some fun with a pair of scissors and it’s not a real error.
For example, to wit:
For Chinese numerology, you'd want 666.
Eights are symbols of prosperity, wealth, generosity, good fortune in business, etc.
Six is a kinda useless number for money -- Smoothness and whatnot are less for money and more for one's tongue. You'd name a wine after a six (I've seen "Dice Wine" referring to 6-sided dice) but not look for it in bills
8 is heavily represented. 6 is a runner-up. 7 doesn't appear to be significant in this context.
Consider the branch phone numbers:
3888 3888
3888 8468
3888 8900
3888 1200
6279 8582
3888 3111
3888 1318
3888 1188
3888 6455
3888 8618
3888 8688
3888 1218
3888 6388
There is technically one 7 in there, but it seems clear that the bank would have preferred not to have it. Counting only the second halves, 8 is overwhelmingly popular, so is 1 (for reasons I don't know), 6 is only barely ahead of what's typical, but still in third place, and 7 doesn't even exist.
You can just display the character, 八.
I am _always_ and _continually_ surprised at what people will pay for things. Literally _nobody_ scaled back their consumption or purchasing during post-COVID inflation. Home prices are sky-high but it's still a sellers market because buyers are scared that prices will jump again and instead of simply being a difficult purchase, maybe next year it will be an impossible one. Must be easy money being a realtor right now.
Every time I have sold something on Craigslist or FB Marketplace in the last few years, I list it 25% higher than what I'd actually pay if I were buying it myself and expect to be negotiated down to something sensible. So far, excluding the low-effort moronic "what's your lowest price" texts, exactly ZERO buyers have tried to negotiate down.
I have come to the conclusion that most people simply have no upper limit to what they will pay for something they want. A few will scoff and turn away. Some will complain about it on the Internet, but most will buy it anyway. I don't run a business but if I did, this would be my golden rule of pricing.
I would agree that the upper limit is above what the common price is though. This should really be a good thing because you want people to consume goods; that makes the economy go in a circle. For necessities like food and gas (energy) the government goes out of its way to subsidize them.
I just think most people don't feel like putting in the work to figure out what a clearing price for an action would be when selling not-auctioned items. This is where things like RealPage get dangerous because it will find the best price and that best price is not what the median people can afford.
Sure, housing prices are high, but matching and buyer and a seller is a logistical nightmare right now.
I'm....not sure....how any of that would work. But hey! Business!
Twitter might do better, though ))
also, my favorite form of getting currency is $2 bills in a 100 stack (so $200) from the bank. I used to use these for gift money on holidays :) but unfortunately my credit union doesn't order new stacks anymore, just jumbled up old $2 bills now.
$2 bills are SUPER fun. 99.9% are not worth more than $2, but they still bring a smile to peoples' faces when you leave them as tips, etc. I always keep a stack in my cash box at coin shows to give out as change to kids, tips to the pages, etc.
They said they're (mostly) not worth more than $2.
They aren't worth less than $2 either. They are worth $2.
I don't expect there's much more value than $200 in there, but if you disagree, you're welcome to figure out what your local bank's limit on currency ordering is :P
It's not a bad idea for a small business, either, until everyone starts doing it.
What's really funny is, if you walk into any other bar in Portland and tip with them, there's a good chance the bartender will ask if you've just been to that stripclub.
Something I wonder is if an uncut sheet of $2 bills would be considered extraordinarily lucky, because it’s a bunch of $2s in nearly mint condition. Or if it would be considered incredibly unlucky because those kids would have no easy way of cutting them perfectly.
(In Europe no one would bat an eye about any € coin. Only the now-discontinued but still legal 500€ notes have this effect)
[1] https://www.bep.gov/currency/production-figures/annual-produ...
Before then, I was cashing my paycheck at a bank. I'd occasionally ask them for $50 of it in $2 bills. The bank had them approximately half the time, and it was fun to pay for things with them.
On top of that, this isn't just a design that a person hasn't seen often, it's a denomination. Think of the 500 EUR notes, they were unfamiliar to many people.
Is it illegal?
https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n36a40.html
I wouldn't advise doing this. Story goes he's been pulled into a room by the secret service for questioning.
Edit: full story: https://web.archive.org/web/20180311084811/http://archive.wo...
I will point out since this site is full of professional pedants, Woz plainly enjoys the art and craft of exaggerating stories and not correcting interviewers :)
* If you are giving a gift to someone you know is into crafting and has a precision paper trimmer you can wrap a gift with some higher value items ($100 or $200 total) so the wrapping paper is the gift. Or crumple and use as padding inside the box. I find this annoying personally.
* Talk about money and how they make money with your kids - the novelty is a plus here.
If so, why is money one can cut a thing?
Shortages aren't much of an issue anymore, as so many transactions are digital, and fabric / paper currency doesn't have any precious metal. The actual value isn't lost, and is easily replaced.
Defacing currency to pretend a bill or coin is one of higher value is pretty hard to do simply by cutting. Most businesses won't take such heavily damaged currency, and banks won't exchange notes with less than half of the original present. Collectors hoping for rarity ("mistake" bills) are, like any speculator, on their own for verifying authenticity (ensuring serial numbers are right, usually).
More to your point, you've answered your own question. Non-fabric currency can also easily be damaged. The convenience and cost of printed fabric / paper versus stamped metal outweighs the risk posed by weakness to damage, and replacing a certain amount of loss each year is generally expected.
So he could literally tear off $2 bills, in front of people who might not even know it was real currency, to pay them.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180311084811/http://archive.wo...
Slight tangent: the YouTube comments used to be famous for being a vile cesspit. Then Google changed something, and now they are full of positivity. Often too full.
And lots of the cesspool was not caused by bots.
This was also around the time they removed the thumbs up/down count.
This was to prevent creator burnout; imagine if every video you put out had some snarky diss against you in the comments.
Whether that actually increases the value of an account or not, I'm not sure. But it's enough that spammers seem to think that having comments & replies on an account.
It may also be purchased comments to improve "engagement" metrics on videos for the creator.
Eh. Yeah. I posted a comment on a urban design video questioning the cost they gave for car ownership and the fact that they did not value the extra time it takes to use transit. Bam. Comment removed. Apparently the channel is able to moderate comments that don't fit their mentality
There have been a few discussions over at level1techs where people thought they thought the channel was moderating them for some strange reason, only to turn out it’s YouTube: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/l1t-youtube-shadowban-shadow...
More than once I’ve made a comment, went to edit a spelling mistake, and got an error on save because my completely unobjectionable comment was removed 10 seconds after posting.
YouTube has a horrible comment automation wordfilter/AI that will silently steamroll comments in a way that makes Reddit and 4chan mods seem rational. The channel owners don’t even see the comments (and last I checked, they don’t show up in your comment history either)
YouTube comments are vapid, in part because anything high effort/quality is likely to get deleted.
You can even see it happening to other people - if you see a comment tree that says it has N replies, but then you expand it and it shows less than N replies, the same thing happened to the people who posted those missing replies too.
The same thing happens with my Google Maps reviews too. Google is too lazy and high on their farts about letting automation do their moderation to care.
"He doesn’t actually print official U.S. currency, which would be illegal. Instead, [he] purchases uncut sheets of $2 bills from the U.S. Treasury..."
Well, yeah - that's why it makes sense. But you have to read past the outright fabrications to get to the truth of the matter.
Anyone who knows Woz can assure you that he is quite a character!
https://www.geekculture.com/mt2/archives/2018/02/wozs_laser_...
Curious though, what speaking appearance are you talking about? He always just seems like a jolly old man to me who is a bit out of touch but quite sweet.
He does a lot of public speaking the quality can be gauged by searching "Steve Wozniak conference", and his attendance can be bought https://www.aurumbureau.com/speaker/steve-wozniak/ What kind of message a person who is getting paid by the platform is going to have?
I'm overall not very trusting of his opinion on the current tech. Yes, he had cofounded Apple, and created the first machines but I don't see anything significant that he created after that. He did start a company in 2020 that was backed by the WOZX token (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/04/apple-co-founder-steve-wozni...).
To save anyone else a google: he is indeed behind a crypto project properly it seems, and the token looks very much like a rug[1], and the cameo thing is real and it seems odd he's not savvy enough to do some background on it/know not to shill NFTs[2]. Speaking fee thing doesn't bother me personally, even I'm on one of those stupid things, they give pretty huge retainers and the money is great. Saw Woz is charging 100k an event, ha!
[1]https://www.coinbase.com/price/efforce [2]https://behindmlm.com/companies/hyperfund/steve-wozniak-2nd-...
That's kind of like saying "God made the world, but he hasn't really done anything else lately so he's overrated". Woz's big achievements might be in the past, but they are so big that he certainly commands respect even still.
Richard Pryor in 1979 on policing:
> RP: Police got chokehold on you out here though, they choke n--- to death! I mean you be dead when they through! Did you know that?
> [Audience indistinctly yelling back "Yeah!"]
> RP: The n--- going "Yeah we know!," white people going "no, I had no idea!"
That would be quite interesting because when I was very young I crank called him after finding his number online. He collects phone numbers with repeating digits and mine has 6 repeated numbers. I guess he found my number peculiar and picked up! In my young and starstruck state I panicked and hung up. How coincidental to have potentially two obscure path crossings with the Woz.
6 repeating digits is quite impressive: maybe you could call again and ask if he was in Chicago around a certain date.
I pulled that out to cut some off and pay and they all started screaming about feds and told me to get the hell out of there, no need to pay.
Then I separated the large sheet into strips and gave them out as souvenirs to friends.
This is what a complete sheet folded up looked like: https://imgur.com/a/uCS5930
It's changed plenty of times [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_d...
(I know, I know, it's not actually that big a deal. The drawers have removable inserts, but you get the point of it.)
(actually, on second though, automatic bill readers in vending machines, etc. would need a big retrofitting, that's probably much more a big deal).
But they had suspended convertibility of dollars into gold every so often before that. (And, of course, the dollar wasn't always about gold. They also experimented with silver and bimetalism.)
They suspended redemptions of the certificated amount. You could not own gold until 1933 from 1974, but excluding of that, you can always convert your money into gold outside of the government if you want.
In a democracy it should be the values of the country that should be represented not individuals.
Everyone from left to right should be able to agree on what the US stands for. How one gets there is what people argue about.
This is hardly unique.
> In a democracy it should be the values of the country that should be represented not individuals
The world's oldest (Britain, Iceland) and largest (India, America) democracies have people on their currencies.
Democracies are a human institution. It's dangerous to forget that.
Since the founding we’ve changed to direct elections in the senate.
Many states have passed faithless elector laws for the electoral college and 17 states (or 209 electoral votes) have passed the national popular vote law.
Sure, you could even bring a national voting system, but it wouldn't make it any less of a republic because of the outsized influence that the sub one percent of people have.
Canada’s banknotes are all the same size but because they’re polymer, have a brail punch in them.
Edit: not braille but a system of raised dots nonetheless: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/audience-specific-reso...
There isn't anything other than US bills you can use to get the raw materials for US currency.
You are very confident when you have no idea what you're talking about.
https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/102/
All you need is the cotton blend of paper. There's no secret ingredient. Either find a paper pulp manufacturer who sells the blend like this guy from Quebec or build your own processes like North Korea. Many developing world currencies are more secure than the USD.
But retailers would protest I’m sure: it’s not the psychology they want.
The only time I keep cash is for tipping, my wife and I travel a lot.
I use cash because it contributes to the local neighborhood economy more than not using cash.
I use cash because I do not want to risk a banking app being broken by a non-banking app.
I use cash because I do not trust banking apps to keep to themselves instead of infecting the whole device with spyware to "verify who you are".
I use cash because not using cash charges extra (often-hidden) fees while using cash often comes with extra discounts.
I use cash because the modern economy is a give-business-money-for-nothing-because-fuck-you economy and I don't want to contribute to that.
There are many reasons to use cash. Pick one or many but stop thinking that cash is worse than a tech solution.
The merchant gets all except for a 2% fee when you don’t use cash. Cash handling also has cost - theft both from employees and outside actors - too.
> I use cash because I do not want to risk a banking app being broken by a non-banking app.
When has Apple Pay or Google pay ever been “broken”? Do you not use a bank at all or not use any banking apps or websites?
> I use cash because not using cash charges extra (often-hidden) fees while using cash often comes with extra discounts.
There are very few places in the US that up charge for credit card transactions. Mostly gas stations and then mostly only for gas.
> I use cash because the modern economy is a give-business-money-for-nothing-because-fuck-you economy and I don't want to contribute to that.
You don’t think the merchant network does anything? Even if you are opposed to credit card transaction fees are you also opposed to debit transaction fees which are much lower and where there is a legsl cap?
I actually see it quite often here in the Twin Cities at small stores, bars, restaurants. A 1~3% discount for cash.
> The merchant gets all except for a 2% fee when you don’t use cash. Cash handling also has cost - theft both from employees and outside actors - too.
I've asked quite a few merchants that take both whether they have a preference for cash vs card. Most (~90%) say they don't care either way. The remainder all say they prefer cash. I've never had one reply they prefer a card to cash. Also, when making large (like four- or five-figure) transactions with people like home contractors, they all request payment via personal check, to avoid the card fees eating a huge chunk of the transaction.
I also dislike the idea of all transactions being trackable/identifiable. I think there's value in being able to perform anonymous transactions.
For reference, I have a card that gives me 3 points back for all restaurants and another card that gives me 2 points back for all other purchases.
Doing the simplest thing possible and transferring those points to Delta for flights nets me 1.3% for each point meaning I will at least get 2.6% back on general purchases or almost 4% back worse case on restaurants.
If they have to accept cash or credit cards, yes they will prefer cash. But there are reasons that some places don’t accept cash at all. It’s because of employee theft. But it’s harder to steal cash at restaurants and bars because everyone gets receipts.
The usual theft from bars come from bartenders pouring more expensive liquors and charging for cheaper liquor and then accepting larger tips.
People spend more money and tip higher when they use credit cards than cash….
And you think that's a good thing?
The “local business” more than makes up for credit card fees via increased spending. They know their margins and the minimum amount needed to make a credit card transaction worthwhile. That’s why many have minimum transaction amount to use a credit card.
Sure thing bud. Keep cherry-picking the business side of things.
> Those credit card perks are directly subsidized by the handling fees they charge your local businesses
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/credit-cards...
> they come from the business you're buying from. For local businesses
Which is not true.
And some of the reasons - like security and losing money - is tin foil hat territory.
Oh. Where does it come from then?
Merchants are prevented by their contract from charging the transaction fee to the customer using the card. Therefore all customers pay the fees though increased merchant prices, even those using cash.
I resent paying for peoples credit card "benefits" - actually they're payoffs - every time I use cash.
This hasn’t been true for over a decade
https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/surcharging...
> Can I add a surcharge to card transactions?
> As a result of a legal settlement to resolve claims brought by a group of U.S. merchants, merchants in the U.S. and U.S. territories may add a surcharge to certain credit card transactions, starting January 27, 2013. Merchants who choose to surcharge must follow
> I resent paying for peoples credit card "benefits" - actually they're payoffs - every time I use cash.
You really think retailers would reduce their prices by the amount of credit card fees if they didn’t pay them?
What kind of question is that? You were literally given an example, in this thread, about how some retailers do just that.
I do use a credit card pretty often too, but I always have a little cash on me and I use it at least weekly.
Not that cash is necessarily a lot better. I can't remember what sci-fi character made the observation that "all currency is mutual delusion", but I observe the truth of that. I've thought it was in Hyperion, but have not been able to find it.
Are you going to get an EV too? Yes we keep some cash because we travel a lot and use cash for tips.
Having an electric vehicle is NOT the benefit you think it is here.
You could just as easily have an internal combustion engine and spare fuel tanks. My car holds about 12 gallons of fuel and I have three 5-gallon fuel jugs ready to do. I use the fuel jugs for my lawnmower to keep the fuel fresh, but the jugs serve just as well during an emergency. And the benefit over an electric vehicle: I can put the fuel jugs into the tank or the trunk and just go.
If your EV is drained... good luck getting it charged when you're given an evacuation order.
Places running out of gas? That's a consequence of poor planning or a just-in-time economy (take your pick) on the gas stations, and a consequence of poor planning or a just-in-time economy on the people buying fuel from gas stations when they should have fueled up before the emergency.
Not everyone can buy fuel jugs. Good luck storing fuel jugs anywhere safe when you're living in an urban environment. It's the same for EV batteries too.
We only had it for six months (SixT month to month car subscription) while trying to decide what our next move was. We didn’t know whether we were going to stay in Florida all year or travel half the year and rent our place out and stay at home half the year or not.
We had just come off of a year of doing the digital nomad thing and flying one way across the country.
OK fair enough
> my cell phone ... running a custom OS
Both very good points. Thank you for speaking up :)
If someone is anti-battery, they shouldn't use credit cards here. Although, cash registers are usually on a UPS too.
Dunno, don't care. I'm not going to mix my banking stuff with my non-banking stuff.
Not being "broken" publicly doesn't mean it's bug-free. You and I both know that Apple Pay and Google Pay are both written with software and enabled via hardware. That doesn't mean it's bug-free. That doesn't mean it can't be broken.
Why risk it? It's not worth losing your livelihood over a very slight convenience.
Would you put a needle into your eye if everyone around you, except for your doctor, told you that you'll see better afterward? No of course not, you're not stupid. Would you put a needle into your eye if your doctor told you to? No, of course not, you are not trained for it. So why would you install a banking app which grants access to your finances, and which cannot be proven to be secure against other apps running on the same device? Of course that's your choice, and I choose to not put that risk in my life.
At least with cash or a debit/credit card, the risk is physically separated.
> Do you not use a bank at all or not use any banking apps or websites?
I wish that were the case. Alas, banks are practically a requirement even for local communities. You'd be stupid to put all of your cash under your mattress or in your home. You'd be stupid to walk around all day every day with a significant chunk of cash/change. Keep excess cash in the bank or investments keeps it separated from the risk that your house is broken into or burns down, and separated from the risk of being mugged.
Banks are regulated (in all countries I can think of) and federally insured in the US (I dunno about other countries' monetary insurances or policies). So if it's a separation of risk, then why undo all of that by walking around with all of your money in your phone? It's exactly the same problem but now in a brand-new electronic domain with little or no regulation at all. That's a stupid thing to do.
So no, I do not use banking apps. Just as I don't put work shit on my phone, I also do not put banking shit on my phone. My phone is where non-technical people talk to me, and is high risk for incoming malware. Your employer doesn't want that, your bank doesn't want that.
For the same reasons, I only open banking websites on a dedicated computer for the same reason.
> There are very few places in the US that up charge for credit card transactions
You already stated that "the merchant gets all except for a 2% fee". So (unless you want to argue that places take the fee at a loss) all places charge it, but many simply don't include that charge as a line-item on your receipt.
It is therefore "often-hidden", which you quoted but ignored.
> You don’t think the merchant network does anything?
I didn't say that at all. The merchant network does help prevent fraud and I use my CC for items that I worry could be fraudulent. I simply don't buy from Amazon because fraudulent activity is too high and it's not worth the hassle. But on the other hand: medical costs, computers, digital services, and even local vendors can be shady as fuck.
But there are plenty of places where you can build trust with your community. Your grocery store with perishable foods is in my experience much less likely to defraud you, specifically because you're able to look at and inspect items before purchase.
> are you also opposed to debit transaction fees which are much lower and where there is a legsl cap?
That's twice now that you're putting words in my message that weren't there. Maybe you should read my message again in a few hours after your next meal.
You're stuck thinking about fees. No, the fees themselves aren't what I'm worried about. I'm worried about shit companies like Amazon who have no moral qualms about mixing fraudulent items with authentic items. I'm hateful of companies like Google who have absolutely no interest in providing help or support to the real people that they harm. I'm resentful of "businesses" who steal your data and get you addicted to stupid shit, just so they can make a profit off of you. I'm distrustful of any "business" who only takes sales online, sends spam, steals or abuses data about you, uses dark patterns for "engagement" to get people to do what the business wants them to...
It's not all doom and gloom. I use a lot of cash, but I don't use exclusively cash. I have debit cards and credit cards and they definitely serve their purposes too. But cash is way more useful than some people on Hacker News want you to believe: if someone is talking against cash then there's a high likelihood that person either has an agenda that won't benefit you or is naive enough to advance someone else's agenda that won't benefit you.
If you are really concerned with security, you should also be concerned with the security of your bank. Do you keep all of your money under your mattress?
> Why risk it? It's not worth losing your livelihood over a very slight convenience.
You realize that no one has ever lost money in an FDIC insured bank account because of either fraud or a bug in client software.
Do you also never use credit cards or debit cards? There have also been security issues with POS terminals and large retailers.
> Would you put a needle into your eye if your doctor told you to? No, of course not, you are not trained for it. So why would you install a banking app which grants access to your finances, and which cannot be proven to be secure against other apps running on the same device?
So do you fly when no one has proven with a 100% certainty that the plane won’t crash? Do you get in a car? Take medicines that haven’t proven not to have side effects? Would you go to the hospital knowing there is a chance you can get an infection that antibiotics can’t cure?
Yes, of course. There are reasons I don't bank with every bank under the sun.
> Do you keep all of your money under your mattress?
No. Do you?
I'm starting to think you're not having this conversation in good faith.
> You realize that no one has ever lost money in an FDIC insured bank account because of either fraud or a bug in client software.
You can claim that all you want.
Meanwhile time is money and dealing with banking issues takes time out of my day. Meanwhile FDIC is insured via taxpayer money and so my taxes absolutely cover the fraud perpetuated by whoever.
Nice trolling in the thread.
> So do you...
I fly because flying is regulated.
I drive because driving is regulated.
I take medicines that are regulated.
I don't go to hospitals in the U.S. Fuck that noise.
I'm done talking to a troll.
But you have an issue with the security of Apple and Google but you don’t have an issue with the security of your bank?
You haven’t seen the quality of software developers at the typical bank have you?
> I'm starting to think you're not having this conversation in good faith.
Your threat model is not backed up by any evidence
> You can claim that all you want.
Is my claim false?
> Meanwhile time is money and dealing with banking issues takes time out of my day.
And which banking issues have you had to deal with because the supposed insecurity of Apple and Android with respect to the banking apps?
> Meanwhile FDIC is insured via taxpayer money and so my taxes absolutely cover the fraud perpetuated by whoever.
Your funds aren’t insured by taxpayer money. Banks pay into the system based on the deposits they have.
And if you trust the fraud protection of your bank? Why are you worried about supposedly insecure phones that would cause fraud even though that hasn’t happen since the modern phone?
> I fly because flying is regulated. >I drive because driving is regulated. > I take medicines that are regulated.
And banks aren’t regulated? What is the threat model you are guarding against?
> I don't go to hospitals in the U.S. Fuck that noise.
You mentioned the FDIC which only governs the US. If you are in a car accident or have an illness, you are going to get treated outside of the US?
Apple and Google are not regulated.
My bank is. Here, let me quote it:
> > Banks are regulated (in all countries I can think of) and federally insured in the US
-> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42612390
> Your threat model is not backed up by any evidence
Isn't it? Let's see.
1. Spam is indistinguishable from spearphishing. It seems nobody understands this.
2. Working in high tech or finance results in higher amounts of targeted spearphishing.
3. Working with people in journalism or political activity results in higher risk of malware.
4. Having friends or family with criminal history or mental problems results in extreme loss of privacy.
5. Having ex-friends or ex-family (eg, divorce) with threats of physical harm results in a sensitivity to privacy. For example, having your name mentioned in court proceedings, even when you are not there, is publicly searchable and gives a reasonable estimate of your location. There's a reason that Witness Protection programs exist and it takes some extra levels of threats to make it into that.
6. "Security" software is often shady ([0], [1], [2], need I go on?)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_(software)#Controversy
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee#Controversies
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Defender#Criticisms
So with that in mind, consider the following threat model built upon those:
7. "Businesses" who don't have a way for a real person to resolve an issue, such as Google. Let me know what phone number to call when my Gmail account is suspended because someone else tried to hack their way in, would you?
8. "Businesses" who use shady practices to steal data without consent. Let me know how to selectively share single data-points of contact information to a single app, would you? I want this app to have an email address, that app to have a phone number, the other app to have a different email address, blah blah. Good luck.
9. "Businesses" which abuse interstate or international policies to maximize profits. One state says it's illegal to hold data? No problem, hold that data in a different state!
10. "Businesses" which flagrantly disregard laws and fight tooth-and-nail to prevent loopholes from being closed. Every single billion-dollar "business" does this, including Apple. Just look at how much pushback Apple had against Europe enacting sane privacy laws.
11. "Businesses" which consider my work to be their work. Good luck getting paid for art when the art is stolen wholesale. Want to make a website with cool stuff? Good luck keeping bots from scraping it and putting advertisements up with no profit for you.
Don't presume that your threat model applies to everyone.
> And which banking issues have you had to deal with because the supposed insecurity of Apple and Android with respect to the banking apps?
None because I don't use them.
I have had banking issues, even without apps. So why add to the flavor?
One issue that I'm willing to share: create a technical-oriented business whose name reflects SQL injection. Something like `select * from \' -- or drop table systable;`. The local municipality was fine with that name. The local bank? Well suddenly their system crashed when trying to create the account for the business. That was a not-fun fun day.
Hell, another issue even unrelated to banking. Another regulated industry, telecom. I had an issue with T-Mobile wherein I could not log in to their website at all using Private Browsing in Firefox on Linux. I could log in with Firefox on Linux without Private Mode. T-Mobile's statement was that this is intentional. After over a year, T-Mobile quietly fixed the problem. There was literally no* technical reason whatsoever to be unable to log in. I had to call every month to make a payment, and also ask for a refund of the call-in-fee because I could not access the website. That's both a lot of time for anyone and also easily troublesome for someone without mental faculties to navigate the stupidity of T-Mobile bureaucracy.
> Your funds aren’t insured by taxpayer money. Banks pay into the system based on the deposits they have.
K. Wanna talk about bank bailouts? Too-big-to-fail?
> And if you trust the fraud protection of your bank?
No, I don't trust the fraud protection of my bank. I trust the fraud protection of the FDIC.
> And banks aren’t regulated?
I literally said that banks are regulated.
> If you are in a car accident or have an illness, you are going to get treated outside of the US?
If I can get outside of the US, sure. Otherwise I will surely die. That's the effect of capitalism's hyper-optimization for profit at the cost of real lives. Ever wonder why so many people are upset with insurance companies?
Outside of serious injury or illness then there are plenty, but fewer every year, non-hospital doctors offices around me who I can rely on to give me a sane price for normal health maintenance. Unfortunately, "normal health maintenance" is not private if you're coming with insurance.
> > You can claim that all you want.
> Is my claim false?
Yes.
My family specifically have lost money due to fraud, non-recoverable from the bank.
Many people have lost money from bank bailouts which only occurred because certain banks were fraudulently packaging mortgages. That's happened more than once.
Back then, there was a two to three day delay.
By the time the card fails a transaction and is getting denied because the card, I'm already at the whatever store and have to give up the purchase in a hugely embarrassing way. A physical bit of cash that you have in your wallet and at home is, well, physically present and simply feels light when you're running low. A debit or credit card with a number in some app does not do that.
2fa is a large blocker here, and while it's understandable from a security practice (so I'm not any to turn that off), it's enough friction to not be convenient, and that's assuming you configure the banking app on your phone because you're not scared of attacks to your phone SMS (which you should be).
So the people who are too lazy to check their app are okay with going to an ATM?
If I start overspending, I get alerts both when my balance gets low and when money is deducted from my savings account used as overdraft.
I rarely get to that point and even when I do, I catch it before the offending transaction posts.
You have your threat model and I have mine.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254303493?sortBy=rank
Not enabling biometrics in the banking app means adding FaceID isn't enough.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> So the people who are too lazy to check their app are okay with going to an ATM?
If we're at the point we're calling people names I'm not sure further discussion will be productive. The ATM is on the way to the subway (which has poor reception), and we're talking about once a month here. It also uses a different part of my brain because I physically walk past to jog my brain (and walking does it in a way that driving past the freeway exit does not).
Again, what's a number that's on a phone, even if it's being texted to you, going to do for physically altering the size and weight and feel of a debit/credit card? That's just another text that gets recieved and disappears from my brain until it's too late.
I'm glad you've got a system that works for you, but the only thing that works about debit/credit card money is I end up spending more money than I would with cash. Changing habits to spend less money works by using cash works in a way that I couldn't get to work with a debit/credit card. (There are some places that don't take cash so I need to use debit/credit, but, for now at least, that's not the norm.)
Apple mitigated that issue last year.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/120340
> The ATM is on the way to the subway (which has poor reception), and we're talking about once a month here.
And my phone is always on my person. You don’t need “reception” to use your debit card.
> Changing habits to spend less money works by using cash works in a way that I couldn't get to work with a debit/credit card
And yet my 80 year old mom can as far as debit cards and my 82 year old dad just started using Apple Pay. He had a really old Android before that couldn’t use Google Pay
That much is useful, thanks!
Taking the amount budgeted for petty cash means you only spend that much "that's spent already", which makes it easier to stick to a budget (because you can't spend cash you're not holding). if the problem is overspending, and there's a budget, there's not generally a problem with underspending that amount, so the idea that it forces more spending isn't a problem (for some people).
Given news reports that (some people in) GenZ has trouble after joining the workforce with computer skills later generations take for granted, and other reports on how much GenZ is unable to save, I doubt it's an age thing. Some people are just better with physical objects vs digital. (Some people do just deal with it just fine, mind you.)
My (step)son has had his own bank account - joint with myself and my wife since he was 9 years old. I transferred his allowance to it. Before he was 12, he had to ask us for his balance - which he did frequently - because he couldn’t get his own sign in.
Since then, he has had his own sign in. He is 22 now and we still have the same joint account with him.
It has overdraft protection to a savings account with $500 in it that we all use for overdraft protection.
I know he checks his account often because when it does slightly overdraft and things are pending. He transfers money from his own savings account that is separate from ours to catch it.
I taught him good money habits from the day that we became a family.
> I find both constantly cluttering up my wallet.
The majority of Americans do not have an ongoing problem of having too much cash in their wallet, even if you consider single dollars to be practically irrelevant. Most people would rather have their money in aggregate take up an inconvenient amount of space rather than having there be a risk of losing it because it's so physically small.
Because if you start with $1000 in fifties, say, the first time you buy something (not using hundreds because many places don't like them), you'll get smaller bills back in change, but the next thing you buy you can probably use some of the smaller bills, so you'll never end up with 50 ones.
I like to keep a balance of $5-10 in ones, and the rest in twenties, with $5/10 sometimes appearing.
I put "failed" in quotes, because all it requires is for the government to do it. Take the one-dollar bills out of circulation, no discussion, done. At this point, take the two-dollar bills (no one will notice) and the penny as well.
I'd much rather have £1/£2 notes instead
Specifically, it says "we haven't redenominated our currency in a while".
I'd rather have ten coins. They'll easily fit in the bottom of my pocket, and when I pull out change there's likely to be a useful amount of money in it.
Do you get yours from selling drugs? Mine are usually fine, very rarely in 'terrible' condition.
The fed has calculated that the seignorage vs. printing costs of switching to coins about balance out for dollars.
Pennies however: we keep them just for nostalgia.
[0] The $1 notes also go through a lot more use in their life so they degrade much quicker iirc and a bit over 40% of the bills in circulation are $1 bills too so switching over to a coin that lasts decades instead of 6-7 years (https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/how-long-is-the-life-spa...) would really cut down on printing costs.
Give it 15-40 years and we'll think about it again!
Of course, by then, so much of commerce will be electronic that I don't think anyone will care about what notes still circulate, other than the $100, which is used more outside the US than inside.
1. Switching costs. There are a ton of vending machines and other automated stuff that takes dollar bills but not coins. You can say “oh they’d switch”, and maybe, but they don’t want to because it’s expense and complexity for little/no benefit.
2. Critical mass. Similar problem: nobody will invest in supporting dollar coins as long as their customers don’t use dollar coins. Customers won’t use them because they won’t accept them from banks and stores. And they won’t accept them because they know lots of infra doesn’t support them.
3. US psychology sees coins as “change”, not money. If you see someone buying lunch with change, the assumption is they’re homeless or something. It’s irrational, but so what? And it would change… if we ever got over the hump.
Don’t think of the problem like a technocrat, where any 5% improvement is obviously worth it. Think of it like a marketer, where you have to change customer behavior, and that needs a 10x value prop.
Or I guess we can think like autocrats: we know what’s good for ‘em and they’ll just have to accept it.
If modernising things is so scary you better not do it, other people will force the change on you, for better or worse, but you’re out of the loop.
Sure, someone may force the change to dollar coins on those who oppose it because it costs them money and offers them no benefit.
They're already switching because it allows them to charge higher prices with less friction. You'll likely grumble a bit while you're feeding the 4th dollar bill into the machine but a card swipe or tap is the same level of customer effort regardless of cost.
Vending machines will continue to move towards electronic payment as the preferred and eventually only widely available option, and will no longer have relevance to what a physical dollar looks like.
That's a very different thing in terms of switching costs than an immediate switch that demands replacement all at one time.
> "Customers have told me firsthand how thrilled they are to receive bills as change instead of dollar coins," said Mike Gallagher, service manager for Coca-Cola Bottling Co. "Sales on those machines have increased, and the technology has been extremely reliable." [2]
[1] I did see one coin mech in the wild that took Anthony dollars; but it was a spendy arcade game and had a dispenser next to it to get the dollar coins you needed from bills or quarters. And there were big signs about it, at the Disneyland StarCade in the 90s.
[2] https://www.vendingmarketwatch.com/technology/article/102518...
Yes I know about regressive states and tracking women who might be pregnant to “protect the unborn”.
Is Big Corp really going out of its way to “disenfranchise” consumers to make it harder to give them money?
But the longer term disenfranchisement trend I see is making the numeric value of money itself ever more depreciated in favor of fine grained price discrimination. So it's not that it will be "harder to give them money", but rather that you will be paying twice as much (ie not receiving coupons/vouchers to obtain the real competitive price) based on them knowing that you personally will still buy.
JCPenney has been doing that for decades. When Ron Johnson - the former CEO of Apple retail - came in as CEO and tried to get rid of the constant coupons and “sales” and implement everyday low prices, consumers rebelled and he was rapidly fired.
Even with cash, stores have loyalty programs that consumers gladly sign up for. In the mid 90s, I worked at Radio Shack which was infamous for tracking how often employees asked for names and addresses just to buy batteries
Credit cards vs cash is the least of your problems and on a meta level, users have been willing to give their information to retailers and been doing couponimg for decades.
This happens all the time for various reasons.
The tired trope of capitalism ensuring that all customers will be served needs to die. Businesses always evaluate any additional revenue against the cost of getting that revenue.
There are a multitude of ways in which the cost can exceed the revenue. The mundane example is that it's more expensive for Google to maintain non automated support for 'non core' services. A more harmful example is the practice of 'redlining' after the great depression where largely due to non financial reasons, the 'cost' of providing mortgages to non whites was deemed larger than the expected revenue from those mortgages.
nit: this is still coming from the vein where businesses are taken to be super-computational agents/oracles. whereas really there is a lack of evaluation of the possible revenue being left on the table, and the focus is on what has already been found to be profitable.
It turns out that democratically elected officials are compelled to be responsive to the voters, and don't want to anger them unnecessarily or waste time and political capital on low-value issues.
> I put "failed" in quotes, because all it requires is for the government to do it. Take the one-dollar bills out of circulation, no discussion, done. At this point, take the two-dollar bills (no one will notice) and the penny as well.
The US electorate is no stranger to single issue voting. If one party spearheads the elimination of the dollar bill, expect them to lose the next several rounds of elections and the other party to reinstate dollar bills. If it's bipartisan, expect a dollar bill party to surface and reinstate dollar bills.
Also, I don't think the $2 bill has anything to do with trying to get rid of the $1 bill? They've been produced most years since 1862, just a 10 year hiatus between 1966 and 1976.
Most "blind" people have some amount of vision. So starting in 1997 they began adding the very large numerals on the back and visual inconsistencies to the front so you can tell them apart with limited sight. Have a look at the bills side by side and you can see how they vary the background gradients and layout for easier identification: https://www.uscurrency.gov/denominations/100
With the 2020s series refresh (Catalyst) all the denominations will get a tactile area to assist the completely blind.
The government also provides free of charge to any legally blind person a small device that reads special markings on the bill and will audibly announce or vibrate the denomination. They also funded iOS and Android apps that use the camera.
On the reverse, there's a building and a similar decorative border.
Your link even describes the "subtle background colors"!
Only the $5 and $100 have a bold, contrasting number.
All the banknotes are the same size.
I challenge you to find a circulating currency with worse accessibility.
Dear me.
The $20 changed significantly in 1998 and had a refresh in 2004. 20 years of consistent design since then though.
And all the bills are the same shape, size, and color, other than war issues. Can't get more consistent than that.
The redesigns were mainly about preventing counterfeiting. That's also the reason for continuing to change them periodically. In some places outside the US money shops and banks won't exchange the old style notes after a certain time. Changing the design resets counterfeit operations back to square one. Then they added the embedded strip. Color doubles or quadruples the number of printing plates and steps needed and truly large (or state-sponsored) operations may have to start over when that happens.
However someone in Congress got a bee in their bonnet about the changes and passed a law that prohibits Treasury from redesigning the $1 bill so it will continue to remain disjointed. That irks me tremendously. There never were any plans to redesign the $2 which also irks me.
As for bill size Treasury/Fed has this philosophy not to stray too far for the appearance of stability. The US doesn't demonetize currency unlike many governments so your grandma can redeem an ancient $20 for a modern one without question. The cotton rag paper, identical size, etc is part of that stability. Also why the color changes were so subtle. The secondary reason is the huge chaos it would create as millions of bill acceptors will not or even cannot take a firmware update and would need complete replacement to handle a new size.
You might not _agree_ with the reasons. They may not be _good_ reasons. But stability/tradition, Congress being idiots, and expense are the reasons the bills don't change much (or at all for $1/$2).
Then all you have to do is make sure you only have one size of bill in your wallet and you've solved most of it.
- these are great gift items for your rich friends or businessmen. The $1 sheet does come with only slight overcharge and everyone I gifted ended up hanging it in their office wall. Its a great conversation starter because majority of people do not know US dollars are produced in sheets nor that civilians can easily and legally purchase them off the US mint site.
- on the downside I almost missed my international flight because TSA agent could not comprehend that this is not fake home-printed sheet of $100. The new $100s have the famous security strip engraved and I would imagine putting large number thru airport security machine will tip it as attempt to smuggle large amount of US currency (you supposed to report anything over $10,000 in cash (whichever currency) when you enter or leave US border). So the TSA got warning on their screen and his eyes almost popped out when he unroll a sheet of 16 x $100 bills on one sheet of paper. Other travelers had fun seeing it too. Its only that his supervisor let me through quickly because he said a month ago there was some money summit in NYC and he got plenty of people going back and forth with these sheets.
- I think everyone should order a single $1 sheet to have on their wall as it is a great conversation starter.
you have the same problem spending $2 bills in the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_pound_sterlin...
Looks as though it's just Ulster, Scotland and the Crown Dependencies nowadays
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank_(Northern_Ireland) Danske bank is a Northern Irish bank (I had never heard of this)
They’re illegal not because of a law but because they were never issued for public use. They were used (briefly) for internal treasury / fed transfers. (Sort of like the mythical trillion-dollar coin that gets talked about every time the debt ceiling conversation comes up).
Because they were never issued privately or meant for use outside of the treasury system, if an individual were to own one it’s because it was stolen or otherwise improperly taken from the treasury.
There are rumors that a few exist in private collections (and I’ve heard of one a single degree away from me), but I’ve never seen it or confirmed that it’s anything more than a rumor.
There is one in the Smithsonian national collection however, and if you get an appointment to view the collection you can see and hold it. Pretty cool.
Not that many 500/1000/5000/10000 notes were used in practice either. Less than a thousand of the big ones and a few hundred thousand of the "smaller" ones even exist. They're all in collections now as the Fed requires banks to return them for shredding if deposited. Collectors will pay a lot more than face value for them so you'd be nuts to try to spend one.
Up until 1965, it was an unlimited liability corporation.
Do banks pay upwards of $1.50 on the dollar for new bills?
If you just want $2 bills, go to your bank. At my bank I need to order them $200 at a time. When I was flying every week they were great as the bartenders at the airport lounges would remember me as the “the Thursday $2 guy”.
After showing us around, he drew in close and told us that he had been quietly doing some work for the U.S. Mint and to please keep it a bit quiet.
He removes a padlock from a cabinet and pulls out a maybe 2 inch thick stack of uncut $5 bills, 2 bills wide and maybe 6 bills tall, all shrink wrapped.
As anyone else would, I start trying to do the math in my head, wanting to crack a joke about fitting the printing machine back up for a “special run,” and so on.
After a moment my uncle admits that it’s all a gag, only the top sheet is actual money, specially ordered uncut, with the rest of the stack underneath just being regular blank paper.
In hindsight the locker was a super flimsy sheet metal cabinet.
Also, I've noticed that requesting $2 bills is an interesting test of your bank's ability to perform its job as a member bank of the Federal Reserve. I've had so many tellers tell me that $2 bills no longer exist, only to have their managers offer to call me when they arrive in about a week's time.
After my condo building's laundry room vendor recently swapped out the card readers for some dodgy IoT app thing, I've started using quarters again, and finding quarters at all is difficult. Most store customer service counters and checkouts have a rule against trading quarters at all, though one did offer to trade up to $2 worth (like for parking meter). All the laundromats that still use quarters have threatening signs on their quarters changers, that it's only for customers. My bank branch limits to 4 rolls per customer (after verifying that you have an account there), and you can often sense that the counter person enjoys the transaction even less than some of the other money-losing services they provide.
I did get a silver quarter in circulation maybe a decade ago, in change at a pop-up farmer's market stand. I recognized it immediately: it's a whiter, more satiny look.
I'm familiar with the concept of manufactured spend, and why credit card companies would try to clamp down on it. What I don't get is why the US Mint would care one way or the other for the concerns of credit card companies. The usual way to eliminate manufactured spend would be to add a credit card specific transaction fee that cancels out the spend points. By the Mint increasing the base price for everybody, this affects even people who might be paying with a debit card, or an ACH transaction (not sure if they're options, just positing).
Before 2013, this likely would have violated their credit card processing agreement.
And also, it would be illegal in some states.
Going though that same effort is a waste of time and implementation budget for something like selling novelty bills.
I agree with you, it is well known that these collector products are intended to generate revenue.
Also, they literally have their pricing rationale in their FAQs:
https://www.usmint.gov/help-center/most-popular-questions.ht...
> We cannot use any tax dollars to fund our numismatic operations.
> The United States Mint’s numismatic programs are self-sustaining and operate at no cost to the taxpayer. Any excess funds are returned to the Treasury General Fund to reduce the annual budget deficit of the federal government.
Hard to say what their reasoning is. It could be pressure from the credit card companies. Or it could be that someone at the mint decided they don't like the idea of people gaming the system.
At the end of the day, it's not a positive-value economic activity. And if enough folks started buying coins for face value just to churn credit card points, there would be financial losses for the mint/and-or the credit card company.
The specific US version was an attempt to bootstrap acceptance of the $1 coin-- if you could get a box of 500 shipped to your door, you'd spend them and eventually they'd displace $1 notes. When they went straight back to the bank, no circulation occurred, and they were burning merchant fees and shipping costs for nothing.
Some other countries used "selling coins at face value" as an explicit financial hack based on seignorage (the value of a coin in excess of its buillion content).
Canada used to sell commemorative $20 (and then on to $50, 100, and possibly $200) coins with modest silver content based on this model.
If someone pays $20 for $10 worth of silver, the government profits $10-- as long as the coin disappears into a collector's binder and never enters circulation.
So it worked fine as long as collectors bought them. When people bought them to generate card points, and immediately took them to the bank to exchange for more conventional currency, the plan fell apart, and Canada abandoned the programme.
The UK flavour had a particularly ugly endgame-- the mint basically told banks not to accept them as deposits (https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3390519/I-b...) which did nothing positive for the programme's long-term survival.
It's a shame these programmes were sabotaged and died. The idea of "instead of stuffing a banknote or gift card in an envelope, I can give you a pretty collectible and feel confident that if one day you need the money bad enough, you can still spend it" was a nice idea while it lasted.
The best "deal" is the most expensive – $100 x 16 for $1,860, at $1.16 per dollar. The worst deal is the cheapest – $1 x 5 for $18.50, at $3.70 per dollar.
Sheet here - corrections welcome:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nb_WLW_WxOYSUS12fslf...
Ignoring collectors items for a moment, I suspect keeping inflation low will lead to higher absolute monetary balance held by the public, more than making up for not raking in much in 'inflation tax'.
See eg how the Bank of Japan could pump out lots and lots of money to be held by the general public, when their inflation rates were low or negative.
Most Americans shouldn't keep their money in savings and should invest into the stock market because it's a reflection of our collective economical input. And if you just keep it in Savings then it'll keep up with the interest rate which doesn't change the stored value, so what's the point? While in big indices there always going to be winners because that's just the nature of the game, so by betting on winners you are going to outrun the interest rate by capturing this additional value that is being created. And people working for these winning companies and startups are very interested in beating the interest rate, they're mostly shareholder aligned as they themselves are equity holders. If you don't have equity you're working in, it still makes sense to bet on winning companies since those people are vey much equity aligned and just want to capture the market share.
Pension funds, 401k are all tight to various investments, indices, etc. that are all reflection of the total economy. And I see it as my participation in the broader economy as I spend money that creates jobs and creates new economic exchanges further, and as a shareholder I capture that value back anyway. People should keep their spending at their social level if they want to keep the economy going smoothly.
I suspect most of the seigniorage these days ain't in the paper notes, but in database entries. Ie reserves that banks hold at the central bank. (Though Interest on Excess Reserves makes this topic more complicated than it used to be in the past.)
The rest of your comment seems to be about what is logical for an individual or perhaps for society. And that's useful, but not at all where I wanted to go with my comment. I was purely speculating on how to get the maximum seigniorage for the central bank.
> Pension funds, 401k are all tight to various investments, indices, etc. that are all reflection of the total economy. And I see it as my participation in the broader economy as I spend money that creates jobs and creates new economic exchanges further, and as a shareholder I capture that value back anyway. People should keep their spending at their social level if they want to keep the economy going smoothly.
People keeping their money as cash under the mattress implicitly also lend it out to the economy. An inflation targeting central bank will notice that (statistically) less spending is going on when the money is under the mattress, and print more money to compensate. When you start spending the mattress money, the central bank will remove money from circulation to compensate.
The net effect on the economy is pretty much the same as if you had stuck it directly into a bank account. (The main practical difference is in who's doing the asset allocation. But the amount of total spending is about the same: it's whatever the central banks decides it should be. No need for you to help smooth it out.)
You are right that with an inflationary currency, keeping money under the mattress is a losing proposition for the individual. But with eg a deflating currency, cash might be a decent investment. (And you can get into these kinds of regimes without crashing the economy, by eg central bank that targets a constant nominal GDP, or with the historic gold standard.)
That's why I was bringing up the example of Japan: when they had deflation, people were keeping lots of cash around.
Just for clarity: I wasn't even thinking so much about money under the mattress, but mostly about 'cash in your wallet'.
If I were the state I wouldn't be targeting wins by removing the value from people's hands through small scale things like collectibles where there still production element involved. I'd try to push it further into completely virtual worlds. Bitcoin comes in mind as a perfect tool for long-term removal of value from potential materialization in the real world that would use resources of the planet.
I can see how the US state is involved in orchestrating bitcoin. Lots of value has been transferred into bits on the blockchain. The blockchain itself is slow which prevents people from moving coins around and pushing them further holding longer. It's also prone to mistakes which further destroys value. It was also a good way to teach people to check all details in the real world.
The US and others have full visibility into all movements of coins which is great for controlling money flows. Creation of new economic models allowed to capture bad elements of the society in the process. And the global construct of bitcoin pulled value out of the whole world creating another win for the US.
I would like for cryptocoins to keep increasing in prices so more people could lock the value they hold. As long as we maintain the idea that some control virtual worlds that value never has to materialize in the real world keeping the planet better for everyone. Of course, electricity was spent on it but relative to the $2T of value captured in a virtual world, it's amazing ROI. Plus we got infrastructure for AI just in time.
Bitcoin (and all other blockchain currencies together) are small fry compared to the regular financial system, and eg banks' reserve accounts at the Fed. At least at the moment.
I'm not sure the US would be so hostile to bitcoin and crypto in general, if they wanted to move people to it? Here in Singapore our regulations are much more crypto friendly.
Btw, there's some technology in the works to make blockchain currencies much, much harder to trace. But people haven't really taken it up so far.
I mean, it's a nice gesture, and maybe annoying the heck out of certain Presidents.
The price for this $2 note + red envelope is >$10.
Here the issue is that they're several times more expensive than their printed value, hardly the same issue.
Basically the mint found a way to make more money than they print.
2) Selling individual sheets has a lot more overhead per sheet/bill than selling fresh stacks of bills to banks.
In the cited Section 31 U.S.C. 5103 it says:
> Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve Banks and national banks
What would be the legal definition of a note sheet? Is it a note or not? A collection of bank notes? The bank notes have pretty specific definitions down to the specific measurements up to a certain precision. Would a music note sheet fall under this definition as well? I don't see what the US mint sells as a legal tender given the strict definition of bank notes themselves.
> Is uncut currency legal tender?
> Yes. The individual notes on uncut currency sheets are legal tender.
It doesn't say that the whole sheet would be considered as a collection of legal tender. So far I see that the individual notes are legal tender, it doesn't say what happens if you cut it. Everything it says is about uncut currency sheets.
It does though?
> Can I cut uncut currency sheets? What happens if the notes on my sheet were cut apart?
> Because the individual notes on uncut currency sheets are legal tender, they may be cut apart and spent. Were you to do this, they would only be valued at their face value, even though you would have paid more than their cumulative value for the uncut currency sheet.
So I would assume as long as you have over half after cutting it, it would still be good, although businesses and banks can turn it down if they are unsure of it's legality or legitimacy, and not having a full serial number would likely get it rejected nearly everywhere.
If banks have to accept if over 50% of the bill is missing, then you can keep the other paper and use it. Using it productively seems difficult but $1M in $1 bills (one bill is roughly 1 gram) would be 1000kg, 490kg of paper, let's say it would be considered residential papers then at $100 per ton, we're looking at $49 in yield out of air. 0.0049bbps + infinite time on doing the process.
> Lawful holders of mutilated currency may receive a redemption at full value when: ...
> 1. Clearly more than 50% of a note identifiable as United States currency is present, along with sufficient remnants of any relevant security feature; or
> 2. 50% or less of a note identifiable as United States currency is present and the method of mutilation and supporting evidence demonstrate to the satisfaction of the [Bureau of Engraving & Printing] that the missing portions have been totally destroyed.
> Who are you going to resell it to?
Ebay or so, if you have no better idea.
"They meet the specs of the U.S. government, so by law, these are legal tender. I have been spending them. You can get arrested for them, you cannot get convicted because you're in the right."
It is probably not something you should do unless you are prepared to pay for a good lawyer, and don't mind the risk of getting arrested
That's not how it works. North Korea is great at producing dollars that "meet the specs" but they are still counterfeit.
The US dollar is not an open standard. Valid US currency is only produced by the mint. If you do something to a valid US dollar, it might still stay a valid US dollar, but that's not because they still "meet the specs".
Meanwhile the law says
>“whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.” 18 U.S.C. § 333.
The quote from Steve Wozniak refers to an official sheet of dollar bills, purchased from the official source. I'm sure that he considers the source as part of the "specs", and is not referring to only the physical aspects.
>“whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months,
This doesn't apply here
https://www.usmint.gov/help-center/faqs/paper-currency-and-e...
"Can I cut uncut currency sheets? What happens if the notes on my sheet were cut apart?
Because the individual notes on uncut currency sheets are legal tender, they may be cut apart and spent. Were you to do this, they would only be valued at their face value, even though you would have paid more than their cumulative value for the uncut currency sheet."
It felt like a novelty at the time, but that feeling wore off quickly.
expensive toilet paper