money

Just now (4:57pm on February 3, 2025), on Fox news’ The Will Cain Show, the host asked his guest, Margarito “Jay” Flores Jr (credited as “former Sinaloa cartel kingpin”) how we can disincentivize the cartels from bringing fentanyl into the US? In response, the key point Flores said was, “We need to focus on the bulk use of US currency.” The drug cartels want the almighty US dollar, so we need to remove their ability to get it.

This makes me wonder how long it will be before President Trump tells us we need to shift entirely to an electronic currency, “to protect us from fentanyl and Mexican gangs.”

I’ve written many times of the utility of physical currency, starting with my AnLab-winning article “The Coming of the Money Card: Boon or Bane?” (which appeared in the October 1996 issue of Analog). The ease of its use for person-to-person transactions, its desirability for things like tipping, the fact that using paper money enables the recipient to receive 100% of the value of the transaction (as opposed to a bank or clearinghouse taking a transaction fee, which is what happens with every credit card transaction, and is one of the insidious drivers of long-term inflation), and so on. While there is definitely a role for electronic currencies (I take credit cards when I sell books [though I have to charge an extra transaction fee to make up for the cost of doing so], and I receive electronic payments from distributors when they sell my books for me), requiring all transactions to be electronic strikes me as a monumentally bad idea.

There’s the tracking of every transaction, the fees associated with them, the fact that one has no real control over one’s own store of electronic currency, and so on.

And, with the current president and administration, I also wonder how much of that move will be in order to enrich those people personally. The Official Trump “meme coin” is currently valued at just under $20 per unit, with one billion available (https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/official-trump). Donald Trump is also the “chief crypto advocate” of World Liberty Financial (https://www.worldlibertyfinancial.com/), in which his family has financial interests (all of his sons are employed by the company).

Today’s Tough Trivia question is: Obsolete US currencies. Currently, the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (the division of the Treasury Department that produces paper money), prints and distributes paper money in these denominations: $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. In days gone by, there were larger bills in circulation in denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $100,000 (though the $100,000 bill never circulated, and was used only for internal government transactions [remember, no electronic funds transfers at the time]). The government stopped producing them in the 1940s, and recalled them in 1969 (withdrawing them from circulation and destroying whenever they made their way into the federal reserve system), but they are still legal tender. Whose portraits graced the fronts of those bills?

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Yesterday’s question was: How many national flags use only the colors red, white, and blue? Bonus points if you know how many use all three of those colors.

And the answer is:

45 countries. 24 of them use all three; 16 use red and white only, and 5 use blue and white only. (No country’s flag is entirely red, white, or blue.)

Red white and blue: Australia, Chile, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechia, France, Iceland, North Korea, Laos, Liberia, Luxembourg, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Russia, Samoa, Slovakia, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the USA.

Red and white: Austria, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Georgia, Indonesia, Japan, Monaco, Peru, Poland, Qatar, Singapore, Switzerland, Tonga, Tunisia, and Turkey.

Blue and white: Finland, Greece, Honduras, Israel, and Somalia.

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Ian’s Tough Trivia is a daily feature of this blog. Each day, I post a tough question, as well as the answer to the previous day’s question. At some point, I’ll offer a prize for whoever has the most correct answers, and another for whoever participates most often (I’ll take into account people coming in after the start: regular participation starting later is just as good as regular participation starting earlier). There may also be a prize for the funniest or most amusing wrong answer. Simply comment on this post with your answer. I’ll approve the comments after the next question is posted. Sure, you can probably find the answers by searching the web, but what’s the fun in that?

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Ian Randal Strock

Will President Trump demand we shift to all-electronic transactions?

Tough Trivia, 5/6/21