Currency bill tracking
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.
The most popular currencies for currencies tracking are the Euro, the United States Dollar (USD), and the Canadian Dollar (CAD).
Background and legal status
Originally beginning in the United States in the mid-1990s, the phenomenon or hobby of currency tracking quickly spread first to Canada and then beyond. Especially with the Euro bill tracking, trackers have taken on a much more competitive nature and have formed communities within their respective sites. Many successful sites incorporate some sort of social media, either through site specific unique techniques, or through outside popular social media sites. In the Eurozone because multiple countries having adopted the Euro, this easily leads to competition between trackers in different countries; in the United States competition plays out at the state or county level; and in Canada, at the provincial level.
Marking bills in Canada with ink or rubber stamp is legal. In the United States, marking is illegal if there is intent to render the bill "unfit to be re-issued"; however, this is rarely enforced and only a fine is faced, if convicted. Marking is widespread in both countries. In the Eurozone marking is not universal, and varies by region. The European Central Bank considers the marking of bills (as well as the destruction of them) to be legal and not exclusive to governments.
Popular currency bill tracking websites
Some of the most popular websites for bill tracking include the following:
United States and Canada
- Where's George?, started in December 1998, was the first site to start a currency bill tracking project and remains the most popular of the sites, with the number of bills entered reaching 238,815,879. This is a total of $1,281,424,480 as of May 23, 2014. The site was created by Hank Eskin to track US Dollars and has led to the creation of many other bill tracking sites.[1]
- Where's Willy? for CAD (Canada). Despite the website starting up two years after Canadian Money Tracker, it is the most popular of the Canadian currency tracking sites.[2]
- TrackDollar for US$[3]
- Canadian Money Tracker - started in 1999, for CAD (Canada)[4]
Europe
Euro
- EuroBillTracker was started on January 1, 2002 to track euro banknotes. It is the largest of the euro tracking sites.[5]
- 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.[6]
- myEurobill, tracking euro banknotes using Google maps interface. Developed with Ruby on Rails.
Other
- Find Lizzy? (which doesn't currently work) and DoshTracker track banknotes of the Bank of England.
- wheresyourmoney tracks banknotes of the Bank of England, US$ and euro banknotes.[7]
- CashFollow for Swiss franc.
- SEK-Tracker tracks Swedish kronor since 2004
- In 1999, Market research company Cint hosted a now defunct tracking service for 20 SEK notes, named after Selma Lagerlöf, whose portrait appears on the obverse.[8]
- Penzkoveto.hu tracks Hungarian Forints[9]
- Info-Kune tracks Croatian kunas [10]
Elsewhere
- The Money Tracker started in 2006 for tracking Australian Dollars, and uniquely tracks banknotes using an interactive map of Australia
- Where's my Moola is a tracking site for the South African rand.
- Where's Renminbi tracks Chinese Renminbi (or Yuan) in China
- Where's NT? for New Taiwan Dollar
- ontabenito tracks the Mexican peso[11]
- Cupura.Ru, roobex.ru, flitter.ru tracks Russia's rubles since May, 2009[12]
- Currency Path (www.currencypath.com) – Track all international currency notes-currently unavailable.
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".
See also
References
- ↑ The Where's George Website
- ↑ The Where's Willy Website
- ↑ trackdollar.com. "trackdollar.com". trackdollar.com. Retrieved 2014-03-22.
- ↑ www.cdn-money.ca
- ↑ "eurobilltracker.com". eurobilltracker.com. 2002-01-01. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
- ↑ "eurotracer.net". eurotracer.net. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
- ↑ wheresyourmoney.com
- ↑ "Aftonbladet it: nätguiden". .aftonbladet.se. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
- ↑ "penzkoveto.hu". penzkoveto.hu. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
- ↑ "Info Kune". http://ikzstudentskiprojekti.ffzg.hr/info-kune/index.php. Retrieved 2015-01-09.
- ↑ ontabenito.com, Rastreo de Billetes Mexicanos Por Internet
- ↑ "cupura.ru". cupura.ru. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
External links
- Where's George? – Tracking US paper currency
- Where's Willy? – Tracking Canadian paper currency
- TrackDollar - Tracking US paper currency
- Currency Path – Tracking all currency bills
- EuroBillTracker – Tracking Euro bills
- Where's Lizzy? – Tracking British bank notes.
- Where's My Moola - Tracking South African rand notes
- Cupura – Tracking Russian rubles