"Thousands of shops will keep accepting old £1 coins after they cease to become legal tender"

Right, but that was three years (!) after they ceased to be legal tender. Don't think that demonetizing old coins is a big issue, provided that the period of time that you have for turning them in is long enough. Six months, as in the case of the old £1 coin, may be a tad short ...

Christian

 

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The NY Fed just had to send millions in paper dollars to Puerto Rico because of Hurricane Maria. No power, no debit cards or ATMs. Electronic currency will never totally replace paper or metal.

 

Going back to the pound...in my three years living in the UK no one scrutinized the coins. Very easy to pass off fakes. I had a couple I was suspicious of but I never kept them long enough to pursue it...just turned them into beer at the Co-op.

 

Cotton banknotes are much easier to be counterfeited. Polymer banknotes are nearly indestructible (with the exception of heat) and they do last a lot longer in circulation. Banknotes in Australia easily last 10 - 20 years in circulation. Cotton rarely last that long. Worn out polymer notes are actually recycled contrary to popular beliefs. Polymer notes are much cheaper in the long term.

The only exception where polymer notes were withdrawn from circulation is from Thailand as the high heat / humidity causes the banknotes to become sticky, making them harder to count.

 

I understand that the polymer Banknotes are much more economically viable in that they last longer, cost less to produce, and have more possible security features. I use them abroad all the time and they seem cleaner too.

I just think that the US Treasury and the Bureau of Printing and Engaving ought not get into the oil business. I understand that the Federal Reserve is a private corporation, but ethics as they are currently, suggest that we keep using a renewable resource for our paper money. I believe it can be recycled too... after its circulation life, bills deemed unfit go to a destruction facility. What happens after they are shredded, I'm not sure.

As a collector of US and World Paper Money, I really like that we get new series every so many years. This makes them more scarce and the fact that their survivability and condition are factors in collector value makes them even rarer.

Finally, I think we have demonetized some currency, I don't think fractional currency notes are still acceptable. I know that compound interest bearing notes have been taken back by the government. Treasury coin notes and National Bank Notes are no longer legal tender. I believe that we have demonetized quite a few types of bills.

To England the only real chaos that can be possible is amongst the citizens that are not currently in the country and are actively serving or working elsewhere in the world, who have hoards of coins in their change jars back home. Excercizing due diligence at home is the duty of the Englands people. They have had their warning. But the governments Royal Treasury is the real winner here. For every pound that doesn't make it back to the Bank of England, they get to deflate their currency. This is why speculators are already betting on the pound to make its way back up the ladder toward its former glory at $1.75US per 1 Pound.

 

Not in the lifetimes of everyone alive, but it almost certainly will totally replace it one day.

 

One day there will be no need of money in any form. But that is a long time in the future.

 

There will almost certainly always be a need for some form of currency, it's just highly likely in the distant future it will end up being something like an embedded chip in your hand or some bio-metric being how you complete a transaction instead of money or some other concept that hasn't been invented yet.

 

You do realize the majority of products you use everyday in all aspects of life are made from oil or natural gas? Ethics most certainly do not dictate that bills should be paper over polymer

 

I do realize that my most of my 41 years of life was dominated by plastic. But plastic is both a blessing and a major problem. One problem is that most of it is not biodegrable or photodegradable. It is being found in fish at alarming rates. In the form of PVC, it is doing damage to coins. On the other hand, it has some truly awesome practical uses. It is to these uses that we should devote our dwindling petrochemical resources toward.

***Ethics***

Ethics is at the center of the use of oil. You need to look at the long term future, instead of the here and now.

I don't know much about you but I can tell you that your certainty that ethics doesn't play a role in the choice of currency materials is a pretty hasty conclusion. Im not going to expend the effort to explain to you how it plays a role, but I sincerely hope that you care about the future of this planet and its people. If you do not then you are in the wrong place, for to many of us, our collections will go to our heirs, and our heirs certainly had the sense of duty to take good care of our inheritances.

 

No it's not. Currency materials are based off of whether they work, durability, anti-counterfeiting measures, cost, availability, and lobbying.

The planet is just fine and will continue to be. By the way oil goes into a lot more than just plastics, you might want to actually look into everything that needs it to be made. You'd be living like you were in the 1600s if you eliminated all the products. Save us the irrelevant soapbox speeches about ethical responsibility to use paper notes

 

ok.... i believe you are what they call a troll.

I don't know where you got your education, but you are speaking to a guy who wrote the honor paper in Natural Resouces Law in law school. I don't have the time for this nonsense.

 

Umm, neither the old £1 coins nor the new ones contain plastic. If you want to discuss "paper" money, use the Paper Money forum here. Should you intend to discuss political issues, use ... some other place.

Christian

 

point taken... no desire to post off-subject material.

 

The federal reserve is not completely a private corporation.

 

Is that Han Solo?

 

If you're serious...not really but in the first movie.