$5 Bill to Have Splashes of Purple, Gray

Heh, I like the direction they're going in.

Currency is supposed to be highly utilitarian, and appearances of decadent elegance shouldn't trump security and ease of use.

Australia has some crazy-awesome paper currency, with clear windows, bright colors, and easy-to-read denominational labels.

We totally need to bling up our money a lot more.

It'll only start looking like monopoly money if they start printing it on bright orange paper or something.

This looks fine to me.

Jack:

I completely agree, they shouldn't trump security and ease of use. But are these measures really making us significantly more secure? I've got one of the modern twenties sitting in front of me, and one of the traditional fives. As a lay person, looking at either of these bills, there is one and only one thing I need to see to know they are not forgeries: embedded in the bill on the left hand side (with the face side facing you) is a narrow security strip with the denomination of the bill printed on it. This security measure is obviously not defunct, since both bills share it. The watermarks, the color gradients, etc... all of these are much less obvious ways to tell if a bill is real or not, and the average person (such as the person at the cash register) is never going to be able to accurately use them. So from a utilitarian perspective, the new security measures are no more easy to use than the old ones.

Frost:

I dunno... each denomination seems to be getting its own color. 20s have a kind of light orange background. Now 5s are getting a purplish one. Who knows what other colors are yet to come? Seems like monopoly money to me. I'd rather stick with basic, traditional green.

Jarandhel, I don't think the security measures are designed so that we can mor easily tell counterfeits apart by staring at our money.

It's more for large-scale counterfeiting operations that move big chunks of currency. It makes anti-counterfeit monitors' jobs easier and more effective.

If that's the case, why screw around with purely visual means of id like watermarking and color gradients? Let's embed rdf chips in the bills. Then we'll know exactly which bills are real and which are fake, and be able to count them from across the room to boot.

Sorry, meant rfid tag, not rdf.

Good idea.

There might be expense issues, or durability issues, or maybe even privacy issues associated with that.

The Saudis probably use the bills as wallpapers.

I know Hong Kong has a pretty big supply of US currency.

I don't know all the details behind HK money but I do know that two different banks, instead of a central bank, are authorized to print and distribute money but each of the banks, I think, has to have enough assets on hand to actually back the money.

The neat, maybe confusing to some, thing about their money is that a 20 from one back looks different than a $20 from the other. And they have older $10's in circulation that are the same size of the 20's but then they have newer ones that are smaller, kind of plasticy with clear windows etc.

I think they even have $10 coins.

And the Bank of China I believe... I just spent about 5 weeks there and the folks I was around only ever mentioned those two banks - however, according to wikipedia there are three banks

Bank of China
HSBC
Standard Chartered Bank

I don't remember seeing any currency issued by the third but I have a 10 from BoC and a 20 from HSBC.

The 10 is a special "polymer" note that I just read was issued to celebrate the 10th anniversary of HK having left British control.