All the other denominations over $1 have gone “Bigfaced” and been colored other than green. Why not the one-dollar bill?
In: 1216
In a word; counterfeiting.
No one is trying to make a bunch of fake 1s because it isn’t worth it like larger denominations, thus the lack of what have essentially been security updates for larger bills.
Its because Americans hate coins. Every few years the mint tries a new one dollar coin and it flops, hard. People complain and bitch to everyone. And they go back to printing 1 dollar bills.
It actually cost the US mint more than $1 to produce a $1. Dollar bill. However there is no political will to force it.
The reason is vending machine operates don’t want it to be charged. It would cost a lot of money to upgrade every vending machine that takes a dollar bill to read the new design.
The other denominations used to be older than the $1, and were all updated to add some security measures, and they updated the designs while they were at it. The $1, as it is, already has some security features, which the mint seems to be good enough considering how little it’s worth. If it doesn’t need to be changed, they aren’t going to change the design just for aesthetic reasons.
The $1 also isn’t really worth updating anymore because of inflation, so someday they are just going to stop printing them and switch to dollar coins, although there is a lack of political will to do that.
It comes down to how much someone is able to steal when they try to change a counterfeit.
If I hand you a counterfeit $100 bill to pay for something that costs $5, I’m getting $95 back in real money. But if I give you five counterfeit $1 bills to pay for that same $5 item, I’m not getting any real money back. Or else it’s just pennies on the dollar.
We should eliminate the penny and nickel and the dollar bill and start using dollar coins and introduce a two dollar coin.
Pennies cost almost three cents to make and nickels cost almost ten and a half cents.
Obviously it’s dumb to continue with them, nobody wants them anyway.
Anyway I think that’s why they don’t bother with a new $1 design. Cost is high, risk of counterfeit is low.
there is no real reason to go through the expenses of counterfeiting a dollar when it takes the same amount of effort to counterfeit larger denominations, earning 20 or 100 times more than a dollar.
As of 2015, it is against US law to change the current one-dollar note design.
Aside from this, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing website states they have no plans to change the design because they don’t see the need to do so as there is not much counterfeiting of $1 bills.
It doesn’t make economical sense to counterfeit $1 bills. The main way counterfeiters make their money is by exchanging the counterfeit money for real money. Counterfeit money is a hot potato, once you make it, it’s a liability (evidence of a serious crime) and you have to get rid of it.
The book The Art of Making Money, which was a biography of a very successful counterfeiter, illustrated there’s two ways to profit off of counterfeit money. Trafficking it wholesale, which requires very dangerous organized crime connections (or perhaps state sponsored ones). That will net you at best 30-40 cents on the dollar amount, which is for the highest quality. Most likely that won’t be the avenue taken.
The second one is using it in a cash transaction and getting change. That generally requires one bill used at a time and distracting the cashier for good measure, then finding other places because they’ll find out it’s counterfeit when they deposit it.
For either case, the investment of time and resources is a net loss for $1 bills. Interesting fact I also read: counterfeit $20s go right to the top priority of the secret service. $20 bills are one of the most highly used and easily passed when counterfeit because of that. People pay much more attention to $50s and $100s.
Every year, Congress appropriates money for the Treasury. And, every year, Congress has barred the Treasury from spending money to redesign the $1 Bill.
For example, See Section 116 here: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/5016/text](https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/5016/text)
Or section 117 here: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2309/text](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2309/text)
Or section 114 here: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4345/text](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4345/text)
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