Speaker 1: Get in tucht with technology with text stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to text stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren. And you know what, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you know what I like more than anything else in
Speaker 1: the world. The New Hobbit movie. No wars, No, no,
Speaker 1: these are good guesses, but panics, Nils Cord, dollars, Ulla bills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about money again. Guys. We've done this a
Speaker 1: couple of times. But no, this is this is a
Speaker 1: topic that was sent to us by one of our
Speaker 1: beloved listeners. Correct, yes, this is listener Matt via Twitter,
Speaker 1: I who said to us, in time for Australia Day
Speaker 1: on Sunday, how about a podcast for Australia's polymer money.
Speaker 1: And you know what Australia Day was several Sundays ago. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is This is not an up to date and
Speaker 1: current podcast, so we apologize for not managing to put
Speaker 1: it out before the day. We're just really early for
Speaker 1: next year, is the thing. Yeah, see here's the thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: time happens earlier in Australia than it does over here.
Speaker 1: And that's the reason. I don't think that's the reason
Speaker 1: let's just I'm trying to cover our tracks here, okay.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we wanted to talk about polymer currency. What
Speaker 1: is it? Uh? And why is it important? Why are
Speaker 1: so many other places looking into it or have already
Speaker 1: adopted it at least in some measure? Yeah, because Australia
Speaker 1: was that the first country to adopt an entire line
Speaker 1: of polymer notes to completely switch over their paper currency
Speaker 1: to polymer currency. And that was back in six although
Speaker 1: they had started using polymer notes way back, and other
Speaker 1: countries had had experimented with it before, but no country
Speaker 1: had switched completely over to polymer currency before Australia did it, right,
Speaker 1: And now more than twenty five other nations are are
Speaker 1: issuing some polymer notes and and more adding themselves to
Speaker 1: the list all the time. The UK, for example, has
Speaker 1: plans to introduce both a five pound Winston Churchhill note
Speaker 1: and a ten pound Jane Austin notes starting in seen respectively.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. And so yeah, we're looking at upwards
Speaker 1: of a billion of these entering circulation, right, I mean
Speaker 1: in three years in the UK alone, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a pretty big rollout. They're going to be withdrawing
Speaker 1: all of their paper notes for those two current those
Speaker 1: two denominations, right right, So that makes makes us wonder like,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal here. So we're gonna set some
Speaker 1: some foundation before we get into all the stuff about polymers,
Speaker 1: because you know, it helps to actually understand bank notes
Speaker 1: in general, currency in general before we jump into that.
Speaker 1: So a bank note is just a unit of current currency.
Speaker 1: Most of you out there probably very familiar with some
Speaker 1: sort of banknote. Here in the United States, we talk
Speaker 1: about dollar bills, five dollar bills, to and dollar bills,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. As you were saying, in the UK,
Speaker 1: it's the pound, you know, in a lot of European
Speaker 1: A sations it's the eu O that sort of stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: it's this is the These are the actual physical bills
Speaker 1: that represent certain amounts of value. It represents a specific
Speaker 1: amount of value for a given nation exactly. So, h
Speaker 1: a five dollar bill in the United States represents five dollars,
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward when you get down to it, which is
Speaker 1: nice because as you've listen to this podcast, you know
Speaker 1: some of the topics we cover not so straightforward. Right. Also,
Speaker 1: I'd like to apologize on behalf of myself for for
Speaker 1: amount of value. That was just a really spectacular phrasing.
Speaker 1: Oh I get so redundantly repetitive that I have to
Speaker 1: reiterate it occasionally. So at any rate, we want to
Speaker 1: talk also about what a polymer is. Now, a polymer
Speaker 1: is a type of molecule. It's does not necessarily mean
Speaker 1: natural versus synthetic. That there are actually both natural polymers
Speaker 1: and synthetic polymers out there. This is a specific classification
Speaker 1: of molecules. Now, a polymer is made up of monomers.
Speaker 1: Not a big surprise there. Polymer means poly means many, right,
Speaker 1: and mono means one. So a monomer is kind of
Speaker 1: like the base unit of a polymer, which you end
Speaker 1: up being these long chains of of molecules. They tend
Speaker 1: to be pretty resilient and flexible, at least on the
Speaker 1: molecular level, depending upon uh, what they're made out of.
Speaker 1: When you get it onto the macro scale, they may
Speaker 1: be more or less flexible than other materials. But if
Speaker 1: you're looking at natural polymers, that includes stuff like silk
Speaker 1: or amber, and synthetic polymers include man made rubber. Natural
Speaker 1: rubber also a polymer, obviously not a synthetic one. That's
Speaker 1: the word natural um, but another synthetic polymer would be plastics. So, uh,
Speaker 1: these have turned out to be incredibly useful materials for
Speaker 1: all sorts of industries. Uh, the technology industry in particular.
Speaker 1: I mean, our electronics wouldn't be what they are without
Speaker 1: these kind of plastic polymers, right. Plastics make it possible, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean otherwise we'd have to find some other
Speaker 1: material to make everything out of and it would be
Speaker 1: all the prices would go up. Plastics cheap, it's easy
Speaker 1: to produce. So these are all really important elements that
Speaker 1: you want in any kind of material. And so some
Speaker 1: people started thinking, well, maybe we could apply that to currency.
Speaker 1: So if you look at we talked about what a
Speaker 1: bank note does, we talked about what a polymer is.
Speaker 1: So a polymer bank note is a banknote, mayor of
Speaker 1: pombers Hey, and we can end the podcast right here.
Speaker 1: Well we'll keep going though, because you know me, I
Speaker 1: can't stop it, just like whatever. It is like three
Speaker 1: and a half minutes. So we're looking at these type
Speaker 1: of synthetic materials, mainly the plastics family, that to be
Speaker 1: used as a bank note. Uh, using plastic. According to
Speaker 1: all the authorities who are issuing these polymer currency uh denominations,
Speaker 1: it's actually cheaper than using paper in the long run.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, of course, the costs of setting
Speaker 1: up a program to create these things, it's going to
Speaker 1: be pretty expensive term, but once once you get it going,
Speaker 1: it should be cheaper per bill to create these things, right,
Speaker 1: And the idea behind that is you know, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: how is it cheaper per bill? And the thought is that, well,
Speaker 1: these things are durable, they last longer than paper currency,
Speaker 1: and paper currency you have to continuously replace. So you
Speaker 1: may not be aware of this, but if you have
Speaker 1: a paper bill and you use it, you actually go
Speaker 1: out and you buy something with it, and someone else
Speaker 1: goes out and buy something with it, and eventually those
Speaker 1: bills make their ways to banks. And what happens is
Speaker 1: that when a bank gets bills, they look at the bills,
Speaker 1: and if the bills have reached a certain level of use,
Speaker 1: if they're if they're basically about to disintegrate or otherwise
Speaker 1: become um unusable or um you probably don't want to
Speaker 1: touch them. Then super gross, I think, is the right.
Speaker 1: Those dollar bills or five dollars whatever, those notes get
Speaker 1: taken out of circulation and replaced with brand new, fresh notes.
Speaker 1: So when you hear about things like a you know,
Speaker 1: a treasury department printing up currency those bills, that doesn't
Speaker 1: represent new wealth, right, that's not new as and that's
Speaker 1: not adding wealth to the nation. What that's doing is
Speaker 1: that's replacing old bills that were in circulation. The way
Speaker 1: you create wealth is not by printing more money, because
Speaker 1: it's as many countries have actually found in the past,
Speaker 1: and and and sometimes people are printing money in order
Speaker 1: to increase the wealth. And there were huge quote marks
Speaker 1: around that phrase in case you couldn't hear them, because
Speaker 1: that is not that that's called inflation. And that's different
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. If you end up just printing currency and
Speaker 1: then dumping it into an economy, you really devalue the currency.
Speaker 1: So suddenly now everything costs more because the currency isn't
Speaker 1: worth as much, it doesn't have as much buying power.
Speaker 1: So when they're printing up these these these bills, it's
Speaker 1: really to replace the ones that are already in circulation
Speaker 1: that need to be replaced. That's the main reason. The
Speaker 1: way you create wealth, by the way, in case you
Speaker 1: are wondering, is through loans. You loan out money and
Speaker 1: you add interest. That interest represents new wealth. That's kind
Speaker 1: of how in a very high level, Like all the
Speaker 1: economics majors out there, just like he is oversimplifying this
Speaker 1: to the point of ridiculousness, but that's basically how you
Speaker 1: create new wealth. Economics has never made a lick of
Speaker 1: sense to me, Like like like nanoparticles, sure totally back
Speaker 1: for economics, no idea exactly totally, but at any rate.
Speaker 1: Um So, these polymer notes, in addition to being slightly
Speaker 1: less expensive to manufacture and and more durable, so therefore
Speaker 1: you know able to be kept in circulation longer, have
Speaker 1: a lot of good benefits when it comes to anti
Speaker 1: counterfeiting measures. Right, So let's talk about some anti counterfeiting measures.
Speaker 1: These are ones that some of them you can find
Speaker 1: on on paper currency, but it's important to run down
Speaker 1: the list of it because a lot of the same
Speaker 1: techniques that are used in paper currency are being used
Speaker 1: in polymer currency as well. So some of these you're
Speaker 1: gonna hear and you're gonna think, well, how is that
Speaker 1: special polymer? Not all of them are. So one of them, uh,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty simple. One is just the idea of
Speaker 1: creating things that are really finely detailed, like really really
Speaker 1: time elements and parts of the image. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's why you'll see a lot of very fine
Speaker 1: line work in many of the images. It's not just
Speaker 1: like a big cartoony looking thing, right, And they'll be
Speaker 1: like little curly cues and swirls and stuff and the
Speaker 1: various designs that are on the bill. And the idea
Speaker 1: here is that if you make those those details really precise,
Speaker 1: it's difficult to copy that, right. It's difficult for a
Speaker 1: counterfeiter to make a fake bill that has that same
Speaker 1: level of detail in it, especially if you were let's
Speaker 1: say that you have a copy machine that doesn't have
Speaker 1: any sort of protection on it where you're able to
Speaker 1: make copies of stuff. The more fine detail you include
Speaker 1: on there, the harder it is for that copy machine
Speaker 1: to reproduce it accurately. And so the hope for people
Speaker 1: who are making the bills is that anyone who accepts
Speaker 1: the bill will look at it and be able to
Speaker 1: tell just by glancing at it whether or not those
Speaker 1: fine details match up against the real thing or if
Speaker 1: it's you think okay. But even even fine detail can
Speaker 1: be duplicated I mean, I mean, I'm sure that some
Speaker 1: of you are thinking, like, well, we I have like
Speaker 1: a really high res scanner, and that could clearly duplicate
Speaker 1: and and you know, if I have a good enough printer,
Speaker 1: then I could absolutely make a copy of that thing.
Speaker 1: But there's, um, there's a specific ink line process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so intaglio printing, right, yes, it gets all. When I
Speaker 1: read Intaglio, I think like that sounds like a cologne
Speaker 1: to me or something Intaglio. So what this is is
Speaker 1: that you, all, right, you take like a roller, okay,
Speaker 1: the roller is essentially like a stamp, okay, and you
Speaker 1: make fine etchings in the rollers, so these are little
Speaker 1: indentations inside the roller. You then coat the roller with ink.
Speaker 1: Now more inc is going to go into those indentations,
Speaker 1: because they're like little wells. And then you wipe the
Speaker 1: ink off the roller, which does not surface exactly, just
Speaker 1: into the etchings exactly. And then you can put a
Speaker 1: piece of paper or whatever whatever you're printing on, and
Speaker 1: well then just those little fine details that have been
Speaker 1: etched into the roller will be transferred to whatever you're
Speaker 1: printing on. And that's a way of creating this incredibly
Speaker 1: finely detailed work so that you do it accurately over
Speaker 1: and over every single time. It's going to come out
Speaker 1: exactly the way you want it to because it's etched
Speaker 1: into whatever the printing mechanism is right, and it will
Speaker 1: also create a design that is raised up off of
Speaker 1: the paper very slightly paper whatever other Yeah, exactly. So again,
Speaker 1: both of those things are indications that you've got the
Speaker 1: real legit currency in your hands. But there are a
Speaker 1: lot of other anti counterfeiting measures as well, including things
Speaker 1: like um multicolor bills. So the idea here is that
Speaker 1: you don't use just a single dye in the dying
Speaker 1: of your currency, so that you have maybe a gradation
Speaker 1: or a couple of different colors on each bill, because
Speaker 1: that is also difficult to replicate. So if you know,
Speaker 1: I remember when I think it was, I guess it
Speaker 1: was the hundred dollar bill of several years ago. Now
Speaker 1: when it when it was redone, it had kind of
Speaker 1: a peach coloring to it besides the green. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a pinkish, peach ish and and everyone's immediate reaction
Speaker 1: was this looks like monopoly money. But it was actually
Speaker 1: a very clever way of cheaply integrating better security exactly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, for a lot of us were suddenly thinking like,
Speaker 1: why why do we have play money? It's sort of
Speaker 1: the arrogant American approach to whenever we go to a
Speaker 1: foreign country. You know, it's not that every American does this,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure anyone living in another country has had
Speaker 1: the experience or at least has heard a story of
Speaker 1: American tourists calling calling American currency quote unquote real money
Speaker 1: and then referring to whatever the local currency has as
Speaker 1: this stuff that I have to use to buy things.
Speaker 1: On behalf of all Americans, I would like to extend
Speaker 1: an apology to you. Not all of us are like that.
Speaker 1: Uh No, some of us are much more subtly completely
Speaker 1: ignorant about your money. I I still feel a little
Speaker 1: bit bad I had the last time I was over
Speaker 1: in England. I had this really ilarious experience with the
Speaker 1: shopkeeper where I just I felt like Arthur Weasley holding
Speaker 1: this pile of British coins and and like she was
Speaker 1: just trying to she She was like, you know, that
Speaker 1: will be a pound five, and I was like, how
Speaker 1: does it? I just held my hands out to her,
Speaker 1: like how you you take? How much money? It? Is
Speaker 1: the really sad part about that story, Lauren, is you're
Speaker 1: not old enough to have been around back when the
Speaker 1: when the English currency system was not based off of
Speaker 1: base ten, when it was like, all right, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's sixteen pennies to a furlong, which is uh, that's
Speaker 1: fourteen furlongs to a half guinea crown thing. Obviously, my
Speaker 1: ignorance of the English monetary system is also great. But yes,
Speaker 1: at any rate, I have also had that same experience,
Speaker 1: so that those multicolor bills obviously another step towards creating
Speaker 1: an anti counterfeiting strategy, but it's not the only one. Again,
Speaker 1: there's also incorporating strips of different colored material within a
Speaker 1: bank note itself. Right, So in this case you might
Speaker 1: have a comp completely different material than what makes up
Speaker 1: the bulk of the bank note. The bank note itself
Speaker 1: may be made out of some sort of paper slash
Speaker 1: cloth type stuff, with these other strips incorporated into them. Again,
Speaker 1: very difficult to counterfeit, you know, there's just really it's
Speaker 1: just about raising the difficulty so that your average person
Speaker 1: can't really counterfeit this money. Uh. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's impossible, It just means that you've raised the difficulty
Speaker 1: so much that the people who are attempting it, that
Speaker 1: number gets smaller and smaller because it's hard to do.
Speaker 1: Another strategy is to use holy grams. Yeah. So holograms
Speaker 1: are obviously these little bit pictures that can uh, they
Speaker 1: have a different you know, they shine in a different
Speaker 1: way when you shine light on You also get kind
Speaker 1: of a three D effect on them. You know, it
Speaker 1: looks like you're looking at a three dimensional picture as
Speaker 1: opposed to just a flat image. And these are of
Speaker 1: course created with my favorite technology of all time, lasers. Yes,
Speaker 1: we did an entire suite of episode about holograms over
Speaker 1: and Forward Thinking a few months back. I failed to
Speaker 1: look up when exactly that occurred, but but go to
Speaker 1: the forward thinking website yeah dot com. Please do I
Speaker 1: mean the the episodes we did on holograms. We actually
Speaker 1: explain how people make holograms and it does involve using
Speaker 1: two different types of lasers in order to complete this.
Speaker 1: You know, it's actually kind of crazy to think how
Speaker 1: complicated is just to make a what what appears to
Speaker 1: be a simple image. But at any rate, again, holograms,
Speaker 1: it requires you to have some equipment that your average
Speaker 1: counterfeiter probably doesn't have access to like really expensive lasers.
Speaker 1: So then we've got including strips of phosphorescent material. So
Speaker 1: then you've got you know, if you shine it underneath
Speaker 1: like a black light and ultra violet light, then you
Speaker 1: might see that it glows if it's a true bill. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if that where a counterfeit and it doesn't glow, you'd say, huh,
Speaker 1: nice try now I'm calling the cops. Right. There's also
Speaker 1: all kinds of different inks that you can use that
Speaker 1: are slightly harder to duplicate. Yes, yeah, including ink that
Speaker 1: will change color depending upon the angle at which light
Speaker 1: hits that ink. Right. This is due to a process
Speaker 1: called uh iridescence. It's a physical process which works by
Speaker 1: virtue of microstructures, which are basically tiny holes that reflect
Speaker 1: light at different angles and wavelengths than the rest of
Speaker 1: the surrounding material. Yeah, this actually reminds me a lot
Speaker 1: of how uh glasses free three D works, and that
Speaker 1: you have these little tiny elements inside a screen that
Speaker 1: direct light in specific ways so that one eye gets
Speaker 1: one set of light and the other eye gets the
Speaker 1: other set of light, and that's what creates the three
Speaker 1: D effect kind of similar here, except instead of trying
Speaker 1: to direct light at your at each eye independently, it's
Speaker 1: just changing that angle so that you get a different
Speaker 1: color experience as you're as you're moving the bill in
Speaker 1: relation to wherever the light sources. Uh. Sure, it can
Speaker 1: even be used to create this multicolor look without any
Speaker 1: ink at all. It can be a purely physical structure, yep, yep. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then there's also using ultraviolet reactive fluorescen inks are metallic inks. Uh,
Speaker 1: again stuff that's not easy to come by, so again
Speaker 1: cutting down the likelihood of counterfeiting. Uh. There's also micro
Speaker 1: printing that's kind of similar to the etching we talked
Speaker 1: about before. It's this is where you're printing really really
Speaker 1: super tiny words or numbers as a way of again
Speaker 1: foiling the efforts of people to copy an image directly,
Speaker 1: all right, because not everyone has access to that kind
Speaker 1: of high definition printing. And then there's also designing software
Speaker 1: that actually recognizes when you are trying to manipulate some
Speaker 1: sort of banknote. Now, this software could be anything from
Speaker 1: a scanner to a copier to any kind of photoshops
Speaker 1: sort of material, where once it recognizes the elements of
Speaker 1: a banknote essentially refuses to help you out. You'll end
Speaker 1: up getting either an error or if you're trying to
Speaker 1: copy something, you might just get a solid block where
Speaker 1: there's no definition at all. It's it's you know, kind
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, it's another level of security that's
Speaker 1: outside the bill itself. This is more on the end
Speaker 1: of the people who are making the software and hardware
Speaker 1: al right, right, you would have to depend upon those
Speaker 1: developers to create that for you, to create it in
Speaker 1: conjunction with you. And a big example of this is
Speaker 1: your ryon constellation. So this can recognize a scan bank
Speaker 1: note based on the patterns that are actually on these
Speaker 1: banknotes themselves. These have been put there by the various
Speaker 1: industries that create the bank notes. If those marks are
Speaker 1: present on any kind of image, like even if you
Speaker 1: included those marks on some other form of image, this
Speaker 1: thing is gonna pick it up and say, all right,
Speaker 1: I can't work with this, and uh, it's not likely
Speaker 1: that you're going to have these specifically put on another
Speaker 1: image because they're tiny. They look like little one millimeter
Speaker 1: sized circles, and they're usually printed in yellow ink, so
Speaker 1: you're probably not going to find it on anything else
Speaker 1: by accident. It's probably not. It's it's not like it's
Speaker 1: working off a facial recognition of Jeffer Center something exactly.
Speaker 1: That would be a poor that. Yeah, that would not
Speaker 1: work out so well. So then there's also just using
Speaker 1: a material that's not just paper, right, because paper is
Speaker 1: not very sturdy and it's also really easy to reproduce.
Speaker 1: So most countries, including the United States, use some other material.
Speaker 1: It's something that's closer to cloth than it is in paper. Linen,
Speaker 1: in fact, is one of the most popular additives yep.
Speaker 1: And in the United States it's a mixture cotton and
Speaker 1: linen fibers, so it's not really paper in the way
Speaker 1: we normally think of paper, which is why a bill
Speaker 1: can survive. I run through the washing machine, yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to do some money laundering. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: didn't really like that joke either, but I'm gonna keep
Speaker 1: it anyway. Also, the United States government says that it
Speaker 1: takes four thousand double folds, as in you're you're folding
Speaker 1: it forward and backward against itself before a bill will tear.
Speaker 1: You know, brand new bill will tear. And also because
Speaker 1: of this mixture, that's also difficult to replicate. However, Uh,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean people don't try. So what do you
Speaker 1: do to try and detect a counterfeit bill? One of
Speaker 1: the popular methods that is, Uh, I've seen it used,
Speaker 1: like I've I've paid for something with like a fresh
Speaker 1: twenty dollar bill and seeing people use these things these
Speaker 1: counterfeiting pins. The pen is meant to try and detect
Speaker 1: the counterfeit bill. It usually has some sort of chemical
Speaker 1: in it, like iodine, and that would react to starch.
Speaker 1: And if it reacts to starch, then will it'll actually
Speaker 1: stain whatever it is it's marking against start of course
Speaker 1: being a common ingredient in many papers, but something that
Speaker 1: US currency does not contain. Right, So the idea would
Speaker 1: be if you mark if you use this marker on
Speaker 1: a legitimate bill, there should be no stain. If used
Speaker 1: it on something that had a paper that had starch
Speaker 1: in it, it would stain, which sounds like it be
Speaker 1: pretty effective, except for the fact that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of ways of removing starches from paper or actually
Speaker 1: just buying starch free paper, and in either case those
Speaker 1: pens would not be effective. So you could have a
Speaker 1: fake bill. In fact, you could just cut out a
Speaker 1: sheet of paper on starch free paper and just write
Speaker 1: this is money on it and handed to someone and
Speaker 1: if they ran the little marker on it, there would
Speaker 1: be no stain. It clearly would not be a real bill,
Speaker 1: right right, unless you're using a doctor Who's psychic paper,
Speaker 1: not doctor who. That's terrible the doctor right. Oh, I
Speaker 1: feel like a bad nerd. It's Mr Who. No, I'm sorry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do all the time at any rate. If you
Speaker 1: if you want to hear a little bit more about
Speaker 1: all of these anti counterfeiting measures. Jonathan and Christen episode
Speaker 1: called the Tech of Making Money way back on August nine,
Speaker 1: and they go into coins as well, if you're curious
Speaker 1: about how all of this currency is created. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember we talked about milling. You know, was shortly after
Speaker 1: they invented money, so it was a pretty fresh podcast
Speaker 1: back then. I was not even born yet. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: all you know it was it was It was odd
Speaker 1: because we had no way of recording podcast. It was
Speaker 1: just us talking in a room. But somehow someone just
Speaker 1: wrote it all down and managed to recreate it. But
Speaker 1: despite all those measures, there are times when counterfeit as
Speaker 1: still find ways to pass fake bills into circulation, and
Speaker 1: so that is why are one of the big reasons
Speaker 1: why countries are starting to switch over to this polymer currency,
Speaker 1: which has not only all the benefits of the counterfeiting
Speaker 1: anti counterfeiting measures we just talked about, but has more
Speaker 1: on top of them. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, all right, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about actual polymer currency. What makes it so special other
Speaker 1: than the fact that it's made out of plastic. Well,
Speaker 1: in order to talk about this, let's talk about exactly
Speaker 1: how this currency is made out of plastics. Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a good idea, all right. So you get a
Speaker 1: polymer substrate, which is really just a fancy way of
Speaker 1: saying a whole big flat sheet of this this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's transparent, so you've got, you know, just imagine a
Speaker 1: big transparent amount of plastic. It essentially looks the way
Speaker 1: that any transparent part on a bank note would look. Uh.
Speaker 1: And at this point you can then treat it chemically.
Speaker 1: You would probably use some form of white ish ink
Speaker 1: to make it opaque. You might treat certain areas of
Speaker 1: that substrate chemically so that the white ink does not
Speaker 1: adhere to it. That would mean that those sections would
Speaker 1: remain transparent, which is one of the coolest things I
Speaker 1: think about polymer currency when you can hold up the
Speaker 1: bill and see cleanly through it, not because there's a
Speaker 1: hole in it, which is the way most of my
Speaker 1: money looks, or because of a water mark. I mean
Speaker 1: some paper currency does include a water mark, which is
Speaker 1: a thinner bit of the paper that light can shine
Speaker 1: through more readily. Yeah, that would be kind of translucent.
Speaker 1: You can actually have fully transparent sections of a polymer
Speaker 1: bank note. So uh, you would then treat it with
Speaker 1: this chemical, you wash all that off, and you would
Speaker 1: end up with a mostly opaque, big old sheet of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Then you would cut it into the actual
Speaker 1: sheet sizes you would use to feed through the printing.
Speaker 1: You would then run it through a printer that would
Speaker 1: end up applying some of the same techniques we talked
Speaker 1: about in the previous section, including intaglio etching and all
Speaker 1: that kind of good stuff in different kinds of banks exactly,
Speaker 1: And then you end up with these sheets of polymer
Speaker 1: bank notes, which you of course obviously have to cut
Speaker 1: up into the right sizes. I mean, you could hand
Speaker 1: somebody just a full sheet of you know, twenty dollar
Speaker 1: bank notes and they'd probably be like, this is awesome,
Speaker 1: where are the scissors? But you know, you typically would
Speaker 1: cut those up so they'd be easier to distribute. That
Speaker 1: sounds like several board game experiences I've had, um, but
Speaker 1: you can, uh, they do furthermore, protect the sheets with
Speaker 1: a with a varnish to keep the ink in play.
Speaker 1: That's true, and that's really important because, as we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: the ink on these polymer bank notes was an early challenge,
Speaker 1: uh in the for for countries that were attempting to
Speaker 1: make this move earlier than others. Right in the early
Speaker 1: a bunch of different places, We're looking into the technology,
Speaker 1: right and uh, what what the you know, you had
Speaker 1: all these different government officials that we're looking at the
Speaker 1: possibility of using a polymer to switch over to as
Speaker 1: the basis for their their actual physical currency. And they
Speaker 1: started looking around at the different products that were available
Speaker 1: in the market. No one was actually building a polymer
Speaker 1: out from the ground up for this. They were trying
Speaker 1: to see what else was available. DuPont had a product
Speaker 1: called taivek, the generic name for that being polyethylene yep.
Speaker 1: And this was you know, this looks like it could
Speaker 1: be a potential candidate for polymer currency, so it's used
Speaker 1: in lots of other stuff too. It's not just for
Speaker 1: polymer currency. It wasn't developed specifically to be polymer currency.
Speaker 1: Was just one of the use cases for it. And
Speaker 1: technically Haiti was the first country to issue a polymer
Speaker 1: bank note, and this was way back in nineteen eight
Speaker 1: but the country didn't stick with polymer currency and in
Speaker 1: fact would switch back to paper because inc did not
Speaker 1: stick to the currency. Yeah, there was some smudging issues,
Speaker 1: which you don't really want in your official, you know,
Speaker 1: government sanctioned currency, right. There were also problems with the
Speaker 1: bills being too fragile. They would break instead of instead
Speaker 1: of folding. Yeah. So this was again early early on
Speaker 1: in the experiments with polymer currency, so no one had
Speaker 1: really hit upon the exact kind of plastic that would
Speaker 1: be ideal for this use. Uh. Haiti was not the
Speaker 1: only country to experiment with this early on. Costa Rica
Speaker 1: also issued a polymer bank note made out of Thai
Speaker 1: vek in nineteen eighty three. They also switched back to paper,
Speaker 1: although they currently used a mixture of both paper and
Speaker 1: polymer currency, they're just not using the tai Vek polymer anymore.
Speaker 1: Then you had the Isle of Man, which you know,
Speaker 1: I keep forgetting is not actually under the governance of
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom, because I think of the Isle of
Speaker 1: Man as you know, it's right there there. I mean
Speaker 1: it might as well be. But but no, no, it's
Speaker 1: God's own money. And the Isle of Man ended up
Speaker 1: using tai Vek. But it wasn't called Taivek. It was
Speaker 1: rebranded as brad vec because it was being printed by
Speaker 1: a company called Bradbury Wilkinson. Same stuff, just rebranded, so
Speaker 1: it still came from DuPont, it wasn't it wasn't made
Speaker 1: by Bradbury Wilkinson. And it's still polyethylene. It's still polyethylene exactly,
Speaker 1: same stuff. And that was produced in nine three. And
Speaker 1: the Isle of Man also abandoned polymer currency after a
Speaker 1: short while, and they use paper now. The first Australian
Speaker 1: polymer notes had had similar problems. The the original, which
Speaker 1: was a ten dollar by centennial note, was in fact
Speaker 1: taken out of circulation. So you know, obviously these these
Speaker 1: early attempts met with let's say, mixed success. It's not
Speaker 1: that they were it's not that it was a bad idea.
Speaker 1: It's just that they hadn't hit upon the right material
Speaker 1: for it to really work and to for it to
Speaker 1: truly be a durable physical currency, because if you're going
Speaker 1: to try and replace your paper currency, you want this
Speaker 1: stuff to be able to last at least as long
Speaker 1: as the paper equivalent, if not longer, a right, hopefully longer,
Speaker 1: so that you're not you're not wasting a whole lot
Speaker 1: of time and money trying to create this new new
Speaker 1: thing only as good as old thing. Australia did kind
Speaker 1: of lead the way once they worked out what kind
Speaker 1: of material they wanted to use, and polypropylene is has
Speaker 1: become the popular choice and it's used in other stuff too.
Speaker 1: Write it's not just in in uh, polymer currency, right,
Speaker 1: It's like a textiles that are based on plastic carpets, upholstery,
Speaker 1: like thermal clothing, ropes. It's it's what all that stuff
Speaker 1: is made out of. I mean, it's it's also very multifunctional.
Speaker 1: It's not just using used in these fibrous kind of applications.
Speaker 1: It can also be used for lots of medical and
Speaker 1: lab equipment like peatree dishes or disposable syringes. So this
Speaker 1: is you know, obviously, again it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where this has a lot of different utility, and they thought, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we make our money out of this stuff
Speaker 1: except in an Australian accent, which, for your benefit, I
Speaker 1: shall not attempt excellent. But you know, this meant that
Speaker 1: they had a lot of other options that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have with paper currency, including that that I was
Speaker 1: talking about before, where you turn earned most of the
Speaker 1: bank note opaque but leave a transparent window. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: this makes it really really hard for counterfeiters to replicate.
Speaker 1: You know, you'd have to be very precise in the
Speaker 1: way you aligned your actual I mean, by the time
Speaker 1: you go through the whole process of making something that
Speaker 1: would allow you to design this, you've probably spent more
Speaker 1: money than you could possibly replicate, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the touch and feel of this polymer currency is
Speaker 1: very distinct, so it's a lot more difficult to to
Speaker 1: get that kind of thing into practice than it would
Speaker 1: be equivalent paper, right a right, And then uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they also were able to feature that raised lettering we
Speaker 1: talked about, like embossing stuff on on this plastic, which
Speaker 1: actually adheres better to plastic than it would on just
Speaker 1: a regular paper bild right, paper can flatten out again
Speaker 1: after after circulation. UM you can you can also print
Speaker 1: designs on top of that transparent window, so you can
Speaker 1: have little little blocks of of a pake bits inside
Speaker 1: the window which just layers upon layers, or you could
Speaker 1: have transparent bits within opaque bits, so you can have
Speaker 1: an area where you know, in a design there might
Speaker 1: be shades that are slightly lighter than the surrounding area,
Speaker 1: and if you hold it up to the light, suddenly
Speaker 1: you can read stuff like numbers usually and that there
Speaker 1: is another great thing to put in there, because again
Speaker 1: very difficult to replicate. Uh. And as we said earlier
Speaker 1: in the episode, a lot of the other reasons besides this,
Speaker 1: this whole um anti counterfeiting approach are things like the
Speaker 1: fact that this money is more durable. Now, how much
Speaker 1: more durable is it um depends. It depends on who
Speaker 1: you ask and exactly what kind of thing they're talking about.
Speaker 1: Both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England
Speaker 1: have said that their their bills are or I mean,
Speaker 1: in the case of England, are are slated to last
Speaker 1: about two point five times as long as their paper currency, right.
Speaker 1: And then you've got the Reserve Bank of Australia. They
Speaker 1: they they go a little further right, four times as long.
Speaker 1: I've I've I've read estimates that they're up to ten
Speaker 1: times as durable. But that doesn't necessary. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of these are are you know, kind of squiggly precise
Speaker 1: estimate numbers. And you can fold this stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's solid plastic. It's not like a
Speaker 1: credit card where you know, it's it's stuck in this
Speaker 1: form factor so that everyone would have to have these
Speaker 1: very long bill folds. You could actually fold this like
Speaker 1: you could paper money, yeah, into a standard wallet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So uh. Anyway, if you're wondering, hey, how does that
Speaker 1: stack up against the lifespan of say an average dollar, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take just a quick tangent here to
Speaker 1: to say something that I think is pretty amusing. See
Speaker 1: here in the United States, we've got several different official
Speaker 1: organizations that have a lot to do with money, including
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve and the U. S. Treasury, and these
Speaker 1: different agencies give extremely varied accounts of how long the
Speaker 1: average lifespan is for every denomination of bill. So depends
Speaker 1: upon whom you ask. I mean, you know, one might
Speaker 1: say a dollar bill has a two year life expectancy
Speaker 1: and that's it. Another would say six years, another would
Speaker 1: say six months. Does anyone agree on this? Are you
Speaker 1: talking to each other at all? Yeah? And and so
Speaker 1: it really depends upon which authority you, uh, you look at.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because I actually first found out about
Speaker 1: that by listening to another podcast called Skeptics Guide to
Speaker 1: the Universe, where someone had asked them about the average
Speaker 1: life span of bills um and so one of the
Speaker 1: members of the podcast group went in to study this,
Speaker 1: and his response was, this was probably the most frustrating
Speaker 1: research I've ever had to do, because I kept getting
Speaker 1: different answers depending upon where I went. I tried to
Speaker 1: corroborate it, and I couldn't get any corroboration. So, uh,
Speaker 1: something that is absolutely definite is that you can clean
Speaker 1: polymer currency a lot better than you can paper currency. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, y'all. Paper currency passes through a
Speaker 1: lot of hands. It's pretty yeah, and some of those
Speaker 1: hands not the nicest hands. You know. It might be
Speaker 1: people who are sick. It might be that the money
Speaker 1: itself just comes to contact with other types of contaminants
Speaker 1: like bacteria. Oh yeah, I mean I mean people store
Speaker 1: money and all kinds of non traditional places. It's not
Speaker 1: all pristine wallets, yep, yep, I've got some some different
Speaker 1: Like just thinking about the places where I found money,
Speaker 1: where you know, between cushions of a couch. Who knows
Speaker 1: how long it's been there. Anyway, The point being that
Speaker 1: these dollar bills or or bank notes whatever can get
Speaker 1: pretty grungy and nasty, and you can't really clean them
Speaker 1: up without possibly damage. Yeah. So if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a polymer that's plastic, you can actually use a damp cloth.
Speaker 1: Just wipe it off, Yeah, just wipe it down, and
Speaker 1: then you've got a clean bill. So it could actually
Speaker 1: mean that you end up reducing the chance of spreading
Speaker 1: things like bacteria around at least a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's going to eliminated entirely, but it
Speaker 1: takes away one more potential vector, right certainly. And also
Speaker 1: just you know, it's it's less stinky than paper linen
Speaker 1: bills can get. But if you're if you're wondering if
Speaker 1: I'm overreacting, I'm not a two thousand two report in
Speaker 1: the Southern Medical Journal showed that pathogens including stephlo caccus
Speaker 1: are on nine of all dollar bills that they tested.
Speaker 1: So don't don't put money in your mouth. No, hope,
Speaker 1: Please don't, please do not do not do that. We
Speaker 1: like you, we'd like you to continue being listeners of
Speaker 1: tech stuff. Now, another argument for polymer bank notes, so
Speaker 1: we mentioned this earlier too, is that they're actually greener
Speaker 1: than paper bank notes. And it's not that the processes
Speaker 1: to create them are greener, because generally, if you can
Speaker 1: use a renewable resource, that's better than using a a
Speaker 1: chemically created plastic resources, especially since you're talking about some
Speaker 1: sort of probably some fossil fuel involved there. I mean,
Speaker 1: petroleum based products are often part of this. Sure, although
Speaker 1: I'm sure that there's there's fossil fuel use and paper money. Sure,
Speaker 1: But at any rate, um, you know, agencies don't have
Speaker 1: to create as much of the polymer currency to keep
Speaker 1: the same amount in circulation because each of the bills
Speaker 1: is going to last longer. Yeah, if you look at
Speaker 1: this from a really big picture standpoint, and you know
Speaker 1: it's crazy, but you have to step way back to
Speaker 1: really see the big picture, you're talking not only about
Speaker 1: replacing fewer bills into circulation, because they're more durable, so
Speaker 1: they can last longer. They can they can remain in
Speaker 1: circulation longer. That's one thing, which means you don't have
Speaker 1: to make as much. That's that's important, but also means
Speaker 1: you don't have to transport as much. You know, once
Speaker 1: you make all those new bills, you have to ship
Speaker 1: them to the various banks, and that requires energy, it
Speaker 1: requires you know that, you know, labor. So if you're
Speaker 1: able to reduce all of that, you can have a
Speaker 1: measurable effect at the end of the day. This is
Speaker 1: another example of how something that on the surface seems pretty,
Speaker 1: you know and dry, once you start diving into it,
Speaker 1: you realize, wow, everything really is connected. It's way more
Speaker 1: complicated than I had first anticipated. So some nations have
Speaker 1: found that they have more trouble with dealing with polymer
Speaker 1: currency than they did with paper currency. Nigeria actually considered
Speaker 1: abandoning polymer bank notes because they said that it was
Speaker 1: difficult to process and that it was difficult to destroy
Speaker 1: the old bank notes like once you were taking them
Speaker 1: out of circulation. So they're they're so durable that they're
Speaker 1: running into problems on the opposite end of how to
Speaker 1: like how do you how do you do how do
Speaker 1: you break them down? Especially how do you break them
Speaker 1: down in a way that wouldn't be environmentally dangerous? Now,
Speaker 1: if you're able to recycle them in some way, like
Speaker 1: first you have to destroy it. Now, this is true
Speaker 1: with paper currency too. There are there are various um
Speaker 1: explanations of how this gets done. But essentially your paper
Speaker 1: currency went taking out of circulation is obliterated. I mean
Speaker 1: it has to be because otherwise if it were to
Speaker 1: fall back into circulation, then have the danger of inflation. Right,
Speaker 1: you suddenly have this issue of not being able to
Speaker 1: control the money supply the currency. Really so, Nigeria said
Speaker 1: that it was getting really hard to um destroy them properly,
Speaker 1: and so it was something that was holding them back
Speaker 1: from fully adopting a polymer currency based economy. Sure Australia
Speaker 1: does have a recycling program for their polymer currency. They're
Speaker 1: they're made into like compost bins and plumbing parts after
Speaker 1: they're too worn down to be used anymore. Which interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm there's so many jokes that I want to make
Speaker 1: about your money going into turning into compost bins or
Speaker 1: or plumbing, particularly the plumbing pipes. I think about all
Speaker 1: the money I flushed down the drain over the years,
Speaker 1: over one hair brained scheme after another. Those get rich
Speaker 1: quick schemes, Man, they just never work out for me.
Speaker 1: I gotta talk to my buddy Zach Morris about that
Speaker 1: when I'm done anyway. So that's kind of the story
Speaker 1: on polymer currency. It's actually I think it's really cool stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, curious to see if the United States
Speaker 1: ever kind of moves to that as well. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it'd be neat to have this kind of
Speaker 1: plastic money that has all these other features to it,
Speaker 1: you know, beyond the ones we're accustomed to with our
Speaker 1: paper currency. So thank you so much for writing in
Speaker 1: and asking us to do that, Matt. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: That was a great suggestion. Hey guys, if you have
Speaker 1: a suggestion for a topic that you think would make
Speaker 1: a great tech Stuff episode, you need to let us know.
Speaker 1: Send us an email. Our address is tech Stuff at
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