There are tools like EuroBillTracker (https://en.eurobilltracker.com/) where you can enter the serial number of bills that you received and can watch them travel around the world. If someone else tracks them as well, that is.
I entered 31 serial numbers over the last 15 years. Those haven't been seen again so far. I guess it's not the right kind of game for me... :)
I played with Where's George? for a few minutes, then got bored. None of these things seem to have enough adoption to make it interesting.
If there were money in it, someone would throw OCR at the problem. Say, attach prizes to certain bills, or finding certain patterns of bills (say, two bills whose serial numbers are mathematically related a certain way).
If a government wanted to encourage spending, they could turn the lottery inside out by offering payouts on cash being spent by everyone. You take a picture of your money and if the serial number is today's lucky winner you get $1MM. Though maybe that would encourage hoarding instead? Cobra effect perhaps?
Euro coin tracking was a bit popular in the early days of the euro, as it showed how coins moved around Europe (you can’t identify individual coins, but each country has its own coins that can be used throughout the euro zone. Spanish and Italian coins move to Germany and the Benelux faster in summer than in winter, for example)
You can still play that game with new coins, but it’s less f
visible now, as most coins are old and those already are well dispersed throughout the euro zone (and, of course, more and more people pay with a card)
No, but eventually they end up at the bank or similar and tracing process starts. One banknote probably won't tell you much, but if thieves are spending constantly you will find many, and you only need to get lucky once.
This isn't so far fetched. Cash registers already have Internet connections and can be outfitted with cameras to record all bills going in, except maybe those inserted in a stack. And ATMs might already be recording serial numbers of dispensed bills. Essentially they might/could do with currency what they do with license plates, which is track where everything goes and at what times.
Truth is, most cash these days probably only has one or two transactions between bank withdrawal and bank deposit.
If the banks track serial numbers, they could probably build a fairly complete picture of what kind of transactions are going on. With the vast amount of data, you could probably fill in a lot of the gaps.
Gas station isn't someone. It's an endpoint, as the bar in my story. If the gas station cashier takes from the register to get a bier, you're right. If not, my thesis still holds I think.
What if I pay with 100 Euro bank note and get back "tainted" 50 Euro note and then pay in bar? Bank notes are not just collected and sent back to bank.
There are tools like EuroBillTracker (https://en.eurobilltracker.com/) where you can enter the serial number of bills that you received and can watch them travel around the world. If someone else tracks them as well, that is.
I entered 31 serial numbers over the last 15 years. Those haven't been seen again so far. I guess it's not the right kind of game for me... :)