Currency bill tracking

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Currency bill tracking is the process (usually facilitated by any one of a number of websites set up for the purpose) of tracking the movements of banknotes, similar to how ornithologists track migrations of birds by ringing them. Currency bill tracking sites can track currency among the users of that website. A user may register a bill by entering its serial number, and if someone else has already registered the bill, then the "route" of the bill can be displayed.

Some bill tracking sites encourage marking before spending, whereas others do not. This usually depends on the laws of the country issuing the currency.

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[edit] Popular currency bill tracking websites

Some of the most popular websites for bill tracking include the following:

  • Where's George?. The first site to start a currency bill tracking project. It was created by Hank Eskin to track US dollars. The site has lead to the creation of many other bill tracking sites.
  • NoteTrace, started in 2006 tracking using Google maps interface.
  • EuroTracer, the second-largest Euro-tracking site, also studies the systems of serial numbers and printer codes of Euro banknotes and the distribution of Euro coins with their different national faces.
  • OSATSU.NET, started in 2000, for Japanese yen. (Osatsu (お札?) means banknote in Japanese.)
  • Where's Renmenbi tracks Chinese Renmenbi (or Yuan) in China

[edit] In popular culture

The act of tracking a $20 bill was the binding theme between various stories in the film Twenty Bucks.

A similar scheme to currency bill tracking - and said to be inspired by it - is BookCrossing, which tracks the movement of secondhand books which are marked and then "released into the wild".

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