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Comment by Rogach | Hacker News Reader

You mean this only for cash US dollar - i.e. physical bills? Not USD in bank accounts?

USD in bank accounts is definitely fungible. They may track who sends what money to whom. But this transaction data is not tied to specific 'dollars' just to 'dollars' in general. So yes, perfectly fungible.

Inside a single bank - definitely. But if you have dollars in different banks then they suddenly start having very different value. Couple examples just in case:

1. Spending dollars on US soil from an US bank account won't incur extra fees (at least visible to the person - I know about interchange fees, but they are borne by the merchant), while using card issued by a foreign bank can incur fees for cross-border transactions (at the level of 2-3% usually).

2. Sanctions and KYC concerns also make different dollars have different value. Money in US bank account of an US company employee can be used at face value - money in some less-favored country bank, not so much.

This examples don't mean the dollars aren't fungible only that where they are stored can make them less accessible or subject to fees. Its like the difference between a gold nugget in your hand and one that's buried deep in the ground. The gold itself is inter-changeable, one nugget is worth the same as the other if side by side. Only one is in a more inaccessible location and you'd have to pay the cost of retrieving it. If you magically switched the two nuggets, the situation would be exactly the same from a value perspective.

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