They’re not worth anything, never were but even less through the years with inflation.
If a store wants to sell something for 99 cent, they can either just take 1€ or 95 cent.
Maybe even 5 cent pieces? But that would be a bit radical.
I am a bit annoyed that easy ideas like this are never discussed in politics, or wherever. It would make our lives just a little bit easier, and having them achieves NOTHING.
Does anyone else think it’s a little backwards that the large denominations are fragile paper bills, but the small ones are metal coins sometimes worth less than the metal in the coin? Shouldn’t the large denominations be coins, which last longer, and the small denominations be bills, which are easier to carry in large quantities?
Making a fake coin is a lot easier than making a fake “paper” bill.
Even better 🏴☠️😂
If anyone can just produce money like the Venezuelan government the currency would also be just as worthless as the Bolivar. Well not really, the coins would at least have exactly the value of the metal inside it, which is better than the Bolivar.
At that point you would just have the good ol’ monetary system where each coin is worth exactly the silver/gold it weighs with all the associated drawbacks.
Absolutely aware of that. Still couldn’t resist to make a bad dad joke :D
Sure, but for low denominations, it doesn’t make sense to develop and incorporate advanced security measures. Coins could support cryptographic technology that would make counterfeiting impossible. Hobbyists have figured out how to do it for $23 a piece. A national mint could probably do it for less.
If you gonna use crypto, why even bother with physical coins?
It’s either gonna have the same benefits and drawbacks of crypto or it’s not going to be secure.
I’m not really talking about cryptocurrency. What I mean is that you could fit cryptographic electronics on a coin that would make counterfeiting impossible. I don’t think that technology would fit on a flexible paper bill yet.
However, it is interesting to consider that you could integrate a national cryptocurrency with physical coins. The benefit would be that people could transact the physical coins without recording anything publicly. Also, the physical coins would also be instantly redeemable for digital currency.
I’m curious as to how this would work. Like you could just clone the data on the electronics and the copy would be virtually indistinguishable. Ofc you can also counterfeit our current currency, so it doesn’t need to be perfect.
If you do the transactions digitally you can’t counterfeit anything. You cannot send anything the blockchain agrees is not yours. But if you can just physically transact coins without recording anything you can always counterfeit and you will only notice once you redeem the coin, just how you will notice counterfeit bills if you try to deposit them.
The way it works is you would just do one transaction to a wallet on the chip in the coin when the coin is minted. The chip is designed so that you can never release the funds on its wallet without essentially destroying the chip. There is no way to simply duplicate the cryptographic data from one of these chips to another. There’s a better explanation available on the OpenDime website.
Isn’t that only because so much effort is being made to improve paper bills - like transparent windows, holograms, UV print, microprint, raised print, embedded metal strips, etc. etc.?
Nothing is preventing anyone from implementing better protections into coins - integrating polymers, transparent rings, multiple metal rings, even integrating chips… it’s just currently not worth the effort.
Well, yes. You could change the form of our bills from very flat cuboids into less flat cylinders. You could even incorporate metals into it if you so desired.
At that point the resulting coin would be just as fake as the bill though.
Your complaint is that paper bills are too fake?
Nah, I don’t mind paper bills at all. I was only questioning the point of replacing our bills with coins if you make the coins to be basically round bills.
Yeah, but I wasn’t suggesting that we should replace bills with coins.
I’m just pointing out that bills are not inherently safer than coins, and that coins are not inherently less safe than bills. It just depends on how much effort you want to invest in either to make them harder to counterfeit.
I would guess that small denominations are used more frequently in cash transactions and are worn down much quicker. Therefore, it is probably reasonable to use the more durable coins for those instead of having to replace paper bills all the time in large quantities
Yes, but I think the premise of the OP is that frequently transacting with coins is a PITA. Even if paper is less durable, people will be happier not having to deal with coins as much.