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Am I the only one who thinks this is a good idea? As long as it's done correctly, it should really cut down on counterfeiting without too many privacy concerns. Also, it will take the concept of tracking money to the extreme. Instead of having to write on the notes and hoping people enter the serial number on the website, you can just query the bill itself and it'll tell you where it's been! That seems pretty cool. It would also help cut down on money laundering, money theft, etc.

You can just go to http://www.wheresgeorge.com/. ;)

Since the average bill only lasts from two to three years in circulation, 7-10 years is probably reasonable for changing the design. The big thing is that government needs to be very agressive in getting old currency out of the pipeline.

The bill change will be a let down to all the people who've been marking all of their currency with Where's George?

What, and reinvent Where's George?

Well, that can happen now, at least in the United States. Every paper bill has a serial number on it already. As you can see, there already is a database of dollars out there. In fact, I remember seeing a show on PBS years ago where they followed a $100 bill around NYC for the day.

All they really have to do to match you up is follow security cameras' timecode/stamps with the cash in the drawer. Piece of cake. I could even see the Office of Homeland Security or other such agency tracking money this way. It would be somewhat easy to establish, given the centralized nature of our banking system, and the facial recognition systems in place.

What I use

For those who enjoy this kind of thing, there's also the Where's George site that let's you track where your money goes.

This seems to just be Where's George for books.

Neat idea though. Now, if they could combine GeoCaching with this I think we'd have something: exercise, travel, and good literature!

You guys are just ripping off WheresGeorge!

I'm not falling for your disinformation, you NRO patsy!

All discerning people realize that, although it is passed off as a harmless lark, "Where's George" is something much more sinister!

&ltfnord!&gt
Starting in 1997, MKULTRA-NG mind-controlled puppets have been indoctrinated to access the "Where's George" site when the recieve a dollar bill with the appropriate command coding on the back. Consciously, they think that they are entering in the Federal Reserve serial number from the bill. But subconsciously, they are entering their MKGUID, which uniquely identifies the MK sleeper agent.

This allows the Illuminati to easily track their agents in the field. If they have new orders for the erstwhile Manchurian candidate, they will be routed to a seperate website with where they will find their updated briefing material.
&lt/fnord!&gt

Of course, the proceeding was totall bullshit, and actually part of the insidious NWO CONTELINPRO program.

Don't be so sure about that. Take any dollar bill and visit the web site WheresGeorge and see where it has been.

Book Crossing lets you set your unwanted books loose in the wild, with a tracking number in case someone finds it. Basically like Where's George or PhotoTag crossed with GeoCaching.

And nobody makes a buck. Is that any better?

on www.goatse.cx

I can provide some data from a loosely analogous situation in the United States. US bills are printed at 12 locations in the US, and are originally distributed to banks based on which of the 12 districts that bank is located in.

I'm part of a fun projectthat involves tracking the motion of US currency. I live near (60 miles from) San Francisco--here are the locations the bills I've marked come from, and their relative proportion.

San Francisco 776 32.0%
Kansas City 323 13.3%
New York 205 8.5%
Dallas 187 7.7%
Minneapolis 182 7.5%
Chicago 146 6.0%
Atlanta 133 5.5%
St. Louis 129 5.3%
Cleveland 99 4.1%
Boston 97 4.0%
Richmond 82 3.4%
Philadelphia 63 2.6%

Now, while the banks print out different numbers of bills and such, it's pretty clear that the San Francisco printed bills dominate my sample.

This analogy is unlike the situation with Euro coins for at least one reason--the lifetime of bills is much shorter than the lifetime of coins. Bills tend to last a year or two in circulation, coins for a decade or more. So, as time goes on, I'd expect mixing to be a much larger effect for coins in the EU than it is for bills in the US...

There are some ways to take a bill and track where it's been and how far already. See the Where's George? website.

If you want to see where your old-fashoined bills go, Where's George? is an interesting site. I give rubber stamps to kids as gifts and they watch their money float around the country.

Private citizens can even get into the act here

much better than Where's George. But, wouldn't the evil hearted find a way to put spam in our wallet?

Jhon

Why bother with the hi-tech solution when so many people are willing to do it voluntarily?

In theory this could make counterfeiting very difficult, or simply raise the stakes, as counterfeiters ply Central Bank employees for materials to counterfeit with. Still, with enough sophistication, merchants would be able to scan money and stop the bills quick. A possibility you wouldn't find in the US with all the whining merchants would put forth on increased costs of doing business, etc.

I wonder how well they'll survive a trip through the washer and dryer, though.

Try looing at Where's George? for stuff about the velocity of money. Their members record the serial numbers on all the bills they get and the system tracks them across the world. Not as detailed as a chip in a bill though.

Maybe I should just start stealing everything I need so I won't be tracable through my money.

If so, then you weren't the only one with too much free time on his hands. ;)

Have you ever heard of WheresGeorge? Time is a luxury that many people have.

Many of you are saying that cash is anonymous. It may be more anonymous than Bill Gates' credit card but it is definitely traceable. Beware of the power of thousands of bored people connected to the Internet. Check Where's George. And that's without analyzing fingerprints, DNA, cocaine traces,...

Talking about tracking bills, check Where's George?, people tracking dolar bills by serial number on the web.
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This website already that tracks money flow via volunteers and they get some pretty interesting statistical results...

Yes, absolutely! In fact, I had assumed, given that this is so obviously interesting, that someone would have worked on this already and made an email distribution-tracking web site. Certainly such a thing exists. Please, someone out there in slashdot land tell us where to find it!

Right now I'm interested in the whole Mahir Cagri "I Kiss You" website craze that was entirely fueled by email. Salon has followed this pretty closely, but, unfortunately, unlike some of their other decent writing, this thread of theirs doesn't provide much depth. I want to know why this silly website became popular and how (i.e, who started passing the url around?). The AP had a much more in depth article on the matter (weeks after the story broke, of course). Here's that link (you may have to tell the AP you're coming from one or another newspaper before they'll let you get to the article, but the link should work. For some reason, old NYTimes links to AP articles no longer work, they used to. Argh.)

According to the AP story:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then, a month and a half ago, hackers invaded and embellished his site, spicing up the text with ``I like sex!'' and adding that Mahir enjoys taking photos of ``nice nude models.'' The hackers also moved it to a new location, and quickly spread the word about the site.

Cagri soon became a most unlikely cyber-celebrity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, it's a meagre excuse for an explanation, but it does more than the salon article, if I recall correctly. Ok, so I can understand stage 1: hackers [sic] mess up the site in fun ways. This is fun and amusing (though illegal, I assume). What I don't understand is stage 2-3: friend of hacker and friend of friend of hacker receive e-mail saying "hey check out this goofy site." Ok, I can see them checking out the site, but why oh why would they think it was funny enough to pass on to x of their friends (who obviously thought it was funny enough to do the same thing)? This really baffles me.

It's amazing to see what has happened to this guy since his site got cracked. He's become an instomatic celebrity. The AP article says that Turkish tourism authorities are hoping that this will boost tourism. Whoa!

So, someone needs to set up a where's george? type site where people can log on and track the flow of email explosions. Who passed what to whom? Trace it back.

Ok, rant over.

______________________(
// ///#\)

Since the police and banks track Serial numbers, if you were to get say $20k in marked (recorded) bills, if you were to spend that money, the second law enforcement or a bank checked those numbers, whoever flagged those bills would be notified.

And it's not just the police that would be watching you. We do that over at Wheresgeorge all the time! :-)

Money in the bank? I'm not getting any WheresGeorge hits while it's in the bank! No way.