> In the west, we take fungibility for granted. [...] The fact that a dollar is worth the same in Los Angeles as it is in New York, or Vancouver as it is in Halifax, is worth celebrating.<p>I've experienced the opposite here in Brazil: someone who had leftover US dollar banknotes from a trip to Disney in the 90s decided to exchange them back to the Brazilian currency. Since they were old banknotes, the bank would only exchange them at a heavy discount (I don't recall how much, but it was at least 10%); if they were new banknotes, there would be no discount. So here we have the opposite of the situation in this article: new US dollar banknotes are worth more than old USD banknotes (this is not an isolated case, a quick web search shows that often old US dollar bank notes aren't even accepted for exchange).
There are fungibility surprises in the west, also.<p>In the UK, one sometimes runs across banknotes issued by banks in Scotland, which generally circulate like those issued by the Bank of England, but have some technical differences.<p>Many years ago, I had a cab driver in London who very adamantly refused to take a Scottish pound note by way of fare payment, and as I later learned, was well within his rights to do so.<p>It's sort of the inverse of the situation described in the article -- Scottish and Bank of England notes are technically not fungible, but are mostly treated as if they are, with a few exceptions, whereas the article describes notes that technically are fungible, but are treated as if they are not.
Some currency factoids:<p>1) North Korea has nearly perfect USD$100 printing plates, and finances imports with them. There have been several news articles written about this.<p>2) In Indonesia, the USD is a parallel currency that individuals/business owners use as a hedge against instability. Typically they'll have a hardbound book with mint USD$100 bills between alternating pages.<p>By mint I mean no holes, no wear, no ink stamps, post 2000.<p>3) I met somebody who had saved $15,000.00 in Indonesian Rupiah towards UK accounting school. Sadly, the month before, the Rupiah was devalued by 90% and he was left with only $1,500. See #2.<p>Typically when you exchange USD$2,000.00 there, you get a brown lunch bag full of Rupiah note bundles. You almost need a duffel bag to do a large exchange or withdrawal.<p>4) The lowest amount, the 100 Rupiah note, worth less than 1 cent, has an orangutan on it. Coincidentally, the strongman Suharto was on the old 50,000 note, worth about $3, the highest amount at the time. Guess which one is called the monkey note? :)
"The rebels were not happy with the new notes. It's easy to guess why. Fresh money could be used to pay government fighters, not rebel fighters. This "blood money" would then cheekily flow north via trade. Since anyone who holds a banknote is by definition funding the government that issues it with a no-interest loan, the rebel north was financing its own enemies. (The technical term for this sort of financing is seigniorage)."
Fascinating. I believe there was a similar demonetization when the IRA stole a large fraction of banknotes issued by Northern Bank in 2005: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery</a><p>The UK is quite unusual in retaining private note issue for banks in the different union nations.
Another interesting story is that of the US dollar bills that were overprinted with "HAWAII" during WW2. It was to protect against Japan invading and seizing currency, so it was marked for such an eventuality.<p><a href="https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/08/21/hawaii-overprint-notes/" rel="nofollow">https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/08/21/hawaii-overprint-n...</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_overprint_note" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_overprint_note</a>
<a href="https://gizmodo.com/the-us-issued-special-banknotes-in-case-japan-invaded-h-1736274265" rel="nofollow">https://gizmodo.com/the-us-issued-special-banknotes-in-case-...</a>
> So by late 2016 we've got two different branches of the central bank, one controlled by the rebels and the other by the internationally-recognized government.<p>This sounds a lot like the Bitcoin vs. Bitcoin Cash hardfork. The pre-fork UTXOs were recognized by both parties, while post-fork UTXOs are only recognized on one side of the fork.
Differing values for the same currency surprised me in Liberia too: <a href="https://blog.nella.org/my-favorite-things-all-at-once/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.nella.org/my-favorite-things-all-at-once/</a>
An interesting example of the opposite is the Lebanese pound: the central bank somehow managed not only to keep operating but to maintain the strength (stabilize the exchange rate) of the currency through the civil war. I believe the head of the central bank moved into the bank and didn't leave for years.
> <i>In the west, we take fungibility for granted. The fact that a dollar is worth the same in Los Angeles as it is in New York, or Vancouver as it is in Halifax, is worth celebrating.</i><p>Except that this is both blatantly false and also not at all analogous. First, a currency's "worth" is expressible solely in terms of what you can buy with it, and the price in dollars of a McDonalds Quarter Pounder is absolutely not the same in different locations. And second, the Yemeni city isn't the important distinction between the different Yemeni bills; the minting authority is.<p>A comparison between French Euros and Spanish Euros would have been far more reasonable, as they're produced by separate minting authorities but still both Euros.
Anacdotal:<p>Late 80's (cant pinpoint the exact year) I spend some time on the Sinai Peninsula and the local Bedouin would not accept freshly printed Egyptian Dollars but only the old ones. They figured we had be Israeli who printed our own money and tried to rip them off.<p>We had to exchange (read: pay a 10% fee) the new bills with old bills from taxi drivers.
This is awesome, offtopic would be good to read more about Cubas dual currency system (Pesos vs Convertible Pesos). Why it was started, as well as what merchants will take, for example they would take my USD in place of the same number of CUCs