Good and bad money

May 16th, 2012
econ, quito
In Ecuador they use US bills, but for coins they use a mix of US and their own. When you get change from someone, you'll geta random mix:
As far as I can tell, no one has a preference for the US versions of the coins. Even though the US ones would be useful all over the world. This is kind of strange: you would expect to see people holding onto the US ones and passing on the Ecuadorian ones. Does this just mean that people have enough trust in the government's plan not to overmint that it's not worth the hassle to deal with sorting?

All fake bills will be will be perforated

(This also suggests a use for the billion extra dollar coins: send them here.)

Update 2012-05-19: apparently they listened to me! Ecuador is importing ~12% ($167M of $1.4B) of the excess dollar coins.

Referenced in:

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Variable fonts aren't universally supported

I make a lot of webpages. I also use Lockdown Mode on iOS and MacOS for a bit of extra security. Sometimes I realize that I forgot to test on Safari and it looks like crap, or I test and don’t notice that there’s been a problem for months (as was the case…

via Home June 27, 2026

Ozy in Asterisk on coping with AI doom

I wrote an article for Asterisk Magazine about people who believe in AI superintelligence soon, and who are chill about it.

via Thing of Things June 24, 2026

Fiddle Practice

For a while I wasn't learning how to play violin very well because whenever it was time to practice I didn't want to. I didn't really like practicing, because (1) it's boring, (2) I have better things to do, and (3) actually I guess there …

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts May 3, 2026

more     (via openring)