• The US Federal Reserve will introduce a new $100 bill with added security features on October 8, 2013. The new bill will be confusing and complicated, so counterfeiters will have a small window where they'll likely be able to pass off a slightly different (but equally confusing) new-looking C-note. [url]
• Ireland's Central Bank says it's offering refunds for a commemorative coin that misquotes a phrase from Ulysses. It was an unintentional error on a coin meant to honor James Joyce, but the bank is still planning to sell the coins -- explaining that the text was "an artistic representation of the author and text and not intended as a literal representation". [url]
• The US secret service has trained counterfeit detection canines to help sniff out fake money. The dogs and their handlers went through a 12-week training program and were deployed in Colombia to find counterfeit currency. [url]

• Amazon Coins are yet another virtual currency -- specifically for buying virtual goods on Amazon's Kindle tablet. One Amazon Coin is equal to the value of a US penny, and everyone will soon be collecting them, so get them before they're all gone.... [url]
• Flooz.com officially shut down in 2001, putting an end to its digital currency that was used on the internet as an early kind of electronic gift certificate. Thousands of people had bought Flooz (at an exchange rate of 1 USD to 1 Flooz), but the company had also sold ~$300,000 worth of Flooz via fraudulent credit card transactions, which ultimately doomed the company. [url]
• Bitcoins are still getting attention, even after some serious missteps, but the market for Bitcoins isn't quite trustworthy yet. If Bitcoins do succeed in gaining mainstream use, will there be a flood of digital currencies based on a variety of different cryptographic rules? [url]

• Pennies aren't worthless. They're legal tender and carry a value of 1 cent. That's why a Utah man tried to pay a disputed $25 doctor's bill in pennies. After he presented the clinic with almost 14 lbs of pennies and demanded that they count them, he was found guilty of disorderly conduct and fined $140. Hopefully he didn't try to pay the fine in pennies as well. [url]
• Have you ever wondered why there are 100 cents in a dollar? In 1784, Thomas Jefferson suggested that the U.S. dollar should be decimalized, and being the influential guy that he was, he managed to convince the government to follow the suggestions he proposed in his essay, "Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit, and of a Coinage for the United States." [url]
• Coin collectors can now get their very own platinum-plated "trillion dollar coin" for just $9.95. The coins commemorate the idea that the U.S. Treasury could simply mint a $1 trillion platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. Apparently, U.S. law allows the Treasury to produce platinum coins in any denomination. [url]
• The Royal Canadian Mint wants to create a secure digital alternative to cash in the form of MintChip. The MintChip smart card chip could be installed in a number of devices, and value would be transferred onto the chip by a MintChip broker, allowing users to securely exchange Canadian dollars both online and offline. [url]

• The US Treasury is technically allowed to mint platinum coins of any denomination -- but at least one lawmaker wants to prevent the possibility of a trillion dollar coin. TL;DR -- does this bill prevent the minting of a half-trillion coin? [url]
• There's less than a month left for folks to hoard Canadian pennies because starting February 4th, the Royal Canadian mint will no longer distribute 1-cent coins. Only cash transactions will be affected, requiring people to round to the nearest nickel. [url]
• Hungary once produced currency with a denomination of 100 million billion Pengos. That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 Pengos -- worth about 20 cents in the US. [url]

The problem with most piracy debates is that the only "cost" they discuss is money-dollars.

This is wrong because there are at least four currencies involved here, not just one (money-dollars).

I propose the following: 

1. ($M) Money-dollars
2. ($T) Time-dollars
3. ($P) Pain-in-the-butt-dollars
4. ($I) Integrity-dollars

For the purpose of this article Money-dollars will be denominated in USD, Time-dollars will be denominated in hours, and Pain-in-the-butt-dollars will be denominated in SI standard units of "amount-of-aspirin-I-have-to-take-after-beating-my-head-against-the-wall-for-an-hour." Feel free to measure Integrity-dollars in Hail-Marys, or hours spent lying awake at night.

• It's intriguingly difficult for any country that currently uses the euro to try to stop using it and switch to some other form of currency. So difficult, in fact, there's a $400,000 prize for anyone who can figure out a process that would actually work and not create monetary chaos. [url]
• Some Brazilians are using locally-printed currencies instead of its national reais -- such as the capivari, which is just one of the 63 local kinds of money. The capivari is a printed bill (with a picture of a rodent on it!), equal in value to the reai, but retailers give customers discounts for using capivaris (making these local bills into fancy coupons, essentially). [url]
• Last year, the IMF's Dominique Strauss-Kahn proposed an alternative to the dollar in central banks' foreign currency reserves. A system of special drawing rights (SDRs) for central banks would be priced according to international trade instead of any single nation's currency. (It's not an entirely new idea, but it's never caught on.) [url]
• In Vietnam, there's a penalty for posting prices in dollars instead of the local currency. The local currency suffers from high inflation rates, so they might want to look into Brazil's monetary history for some lessons.... [url]
• To discover more stuff on economics, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, has often voiced his yearning for a "rebalancing" of the economy towards neglected manufacturing, and he will put the nation's money where his mouth is next month when the Bank produces a new £50 note celebrating two pioneers of the industrial revolution.

The Bank will evoke the memory of the inventor James Watt and his Birmingham business partner, Matthew Boulton on the new note.

[Boulton] later went into partnership with James Watt, who took the Newcomen steam engine, then the latest design, and made a series of crucial improvements, improving its efficiency and making it more commercial.

By 1800, Watt's version [of the Newcomen steam engine] was outselling its predecessor, and they were shipping it across the world. Boulton and Watt worked together to pioneer the use of the steam engine in the cotton spinning industry; and Boulton also used Watt's engine to power minting machines, pressing coins at his Soho Mint in Birmingham, to boost the supply provided by the Royal Mint.

Once Watt's patents were secured and production started, a substantial portion of his energy was devoted to fending off rival inventors. In 1782, Watt secured an additional patent, made "necessary in consequence of ... having been so unfairly anticipated, by [Matthew] Wasborough in the crank motion". More dramatically, in the 1790s, when the superior Hornblower engine was put into production, Boulton and Watt went after him with the full force of the legal system.

During the period of Watt's patents the United Kingdom added about 750 horsepower of steam engines per year. In the thirty years following Watt's patents, additional horsepower was added at a rate of more than 4,000 per year. Moreover, the fuel efficiency of steam engines changed little during the period of Watt's patent; while between 1810 and 1835 it is estimated to have increased by a factor of five.

After the expiration of Watt's patents, not only was there an explosion in the production and efficiency of engines, but steam power came into its own as the driving force of the Industrial Revolution. Over a thirty year period steam engines were modified and improved as crucial innovations such as the steam train, the steamboat and the steam jenny came into wide usage. The key innovation was the high-pressure steam engine — development of which had been blocked by Watt's strategic use of his patent. Many new improvements to the steam engine, such as those of William Bull, Richard Trevithick, and Arthur Woolf, became available by 1804: although developed earlier these innovations were kept idle until the Boulton and Watt patent expired.

Ironically, not only did Watt use the patent system as a legal cudgel with which to smash competition, but his own efforts at developing a superior steam engine were hindered by the very same patent system he used to keep competitors at bay. An important limitation of the original Newcomen engine was its inability to deliver a steady rotary motion. The most convenient solution, involving the combined use of the crank and a flywheel, relied on a method patented by James Pickard, which prevented Watt from using it. Watt also made various attempts at efficiently transforming reciprocating into rotary motion, reaching, apparently, the same solution as Pickard. But the existence of a patent forced him to contrive an alternative less-efficient mechanical device, the "sun and planet" gear. It was only in 1794, after the expiration of Pickard's patent that Boulton and Watt adopted the economically and technically superior crank.

So Davis, the author of the New Yorker story, emails Clear.

"I like to keep a low profile," Clear replies. "I'm curious to know how you found me."

Davis eventually cuts to the chase:

Finally, I asked, "Are you Satoshi?"

He laughed, but didn't respond. There was an awkward silence.

"If you like, I'd be happy to review the design for you," he offered instead. "I could let you know what I think."

"Sure," I said hesitantly. "Do you need me to send you a link to the code?"

"I think I can find it," he said.

In the end, Clear says he's not the guy — but his denial leaves the door open just a crack:

"I'm not Satoshi," Clear said. "But even if I was I wouldn't tell you."

You have three kinds of notes in your wallet. The first you use at the grocery store. The second, at the bank and in the financial markets. The third, between your employer, the state, and public services. Each has very different volatilities and trajectories, because each has very different levels of supply, demand which are, crucially, independent from one another--but interdependent on real wealth, long-run productivity, etc.