[Timesink]

We've still got the most boring money in the world.

That's intentional. It's a psychological thing to keep the greenback accepted as the de facto "standard currency" in the rest of the world. Dull = staid = dependable = solid = the US dollar. You're never going to see garish, blinding, color-cause-it's-pretty, ultra-modern US currency that looks like this:

10


20


50


100


photos not actual size

[Conservative til I die]

Additionally, the idea to stop counterfeiters was that familiarity, while also breeding contempt, would act as a way to fight counterfeits, since presumably, people would be able to spot something fishy on a bill. And like you said, overseas it helps because people feel comfortable about a US bill knowing that this is what it has and always looks like.

In the past, we did change our currency designs in some cases, every 5 years, depending on the bill. And we did have various designs with various colors, mostly greens, some reds, even some gold and orange and blue and brown. Of course, the neons you showed in your post just didn't exist then. But the overall idea is the same.

Of course in today's world of high-resolution scanners and printers, familiarity doesn't help anymore, since counterfeiters can make excellent fascimiles. So we have to swing back to the other side of the spectrum with lots of different colors thrown in and new pieces of design that have a security purpose as well. The negative consequence of this is that it can confuse and make people in other countries wary, but I think we're countering that by not making the design changes drastic. Just adding subtle color and some extra watermarks and stuff.

[xp38]

I like the 10 and the 100. You forgot the purple 5 btw.