Latest / The Infographics Show Podcast / How Money is Made: Inside U.S. Money Printing Factory

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How Money is Made: Inside U.S. Money Printing Factory · The Infographics Show Podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Dallas, Fort Worth. The year is nineteen ninety. Picture this
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: construction crews are pouring concrete out on the Texas prairie.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: And they're pouring a massive amount of concrete, like truly
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: unprecedented amounts.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they pour so much that commercial supply and the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: entire metroplex just vanishes for three consecutive days. The region
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is completely dry. You literally cannot buy a bag of
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: commercial concrete anywhere in Dallas.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Or Fort Worth, right because every single ounce is going
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: to this one site. They are building a vault, but
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: you know, not just any vault, a literal fortress.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: The walls are impossibly thick. I mean they have to be.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: This building will eventually house seven billion dollars in pure
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: physical cash.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: It's wild.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: It sits out on the prairie in northwest Fort Worth,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: hidden beneath this massive glass pyramid, and the architecture itself
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: is actually inspired by the physical green back.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's surrounded by barbed wire, dual fences. You've
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: got tire slashing spikes, block in the roads, sixty to
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: seventy federal police just patrolling the perimeter. And inside it
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: smells like money, like crisp freshly printed money.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome to beyond infographics. Today we're taking you inside the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: fortress of American money. We have a massive stack of
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: sources on the table for this one internal US Mint
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: production guides, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, factory protocols.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Anti counterfeiting specks straight from US Currency dot Gov exactly.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: And we also have this truly fascinating historical document. It's
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: a Federal Reserve budget review from nineteen eighty five to
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six, which is great because it exposes the
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: true scale of the monetary machine. It shows us what
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: actually happens behind the curtain.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: So the mission today is simple. We are going to
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: map the secret life cycle of your pocket change and
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: your paper bills. We're going to track how a theoretical
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: concept of value becomes a highly engineered physical object.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: We will explore the sheer violence of a coin strike,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the one hundred tons of pressure, the fifty seven ton
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: printing presses, and the microscopic color shifting technology embedded right
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: in your wallet.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Stick around, because you will never look at the loose
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: change in your couch the same way again.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: You'll never ignore the hidden.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Three dimensional ribbons in a one hundred dollars bill once you
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: actually understand the physics behind them.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: But before a single dollar is printed in that Texas fortress,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: we have to zoom way out. We have to look
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: at the invisible architecture, the big picture, right. Who actually
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: decides we need more money? And how massive is the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: system that tracks it. I'm looking at this nineteen eighty
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: five Federal Reserve System budget review, and this document is
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: just a time capsule.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: It is a time capsule, but it reveals the permanent
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: skeleton of the American economy. The Federal Reserve System is
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: the architect, and being the architect is incredibly expensive. In
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, they spent one point two billion dollars
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: just to keep the system running, and they budget one
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: point three billion for nineteen eighty six.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: That is a massive operating cost just manage money. But
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: looking at the balance sheet, they aren't losing money, and
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: not even close. In nineteen eighty five alone, the FED
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: returns seventeen point eight billion dollars in excess earnings back
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: to the US Treasury. Wait, they generated seventeen point eight
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: billion dollars in profit in nineteen eighty five and just
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: handed it back to the government. That sounds like the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: ultimate infinite money glitch. The entity that manages the money
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: is somehow the most profitable business in the country. How
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: does that actually work?
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: So it's not a glitch, right, it's monetary policy and action.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: That massive income comes mostly from their system open.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: Market account portfolio.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: They hold this gigantic portfolio of US government securities, bonds,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: treasury notes.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: All that stuff.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: So they buy government debt and the government pays them
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: interest exactly.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: But they don't buy it just to make money.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: They buy and sell these securities on the open market
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: to control the money supply itself.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Oh I safe.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: If the Fed wants to inject cash into the economy,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: they buy securities from banks, the credit banks reserve accounts
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: and boom new moneys in the system.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And if they want to cool the economy down, they
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: sell securities. They pull cash out of the system.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: And while they hold those trillions in securities, they collect the.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Interest staggering amounts of interest.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Unbelievable amounts.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So they use a tiny fraction of that interest to
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: pay their one point two billion dollar operating expenses and
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: the rest by law, they have to hand the excess
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: back to the US Treasury. They fund their own massive
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: oversight operation, and then they basically subsidize the federal government.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And their overset operation was handling unimaginable volume even back then,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I mean the physical money, it was just the tip
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: of the iceberg. I'm looking at the numbers for non
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: physical money. In nineteen eighty five, the FED processed thirty
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: seven percent of all domestic checks, which is huge. Think
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: about the physical logistics of moving millions of paper checks
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: across the country in bags and planes before digital imaging.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: But it goes way deeper. They ran a system called
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: fedwire h fedwire fedwire. They moved four hundred and thirty
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: five billion dollars every single day.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: And that was forty years ago, right.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Long before the modern Internet, long before fiber optic cables.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: How is that even physically possible in nineteen eighty five,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: were they just using a giant network of fax machines
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: not faxes?
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: No. Fedwire was a highly secure, proprietary electronic transfer system.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: It linked six thousand depository institutions together. They used dedicated,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: heavily encrypted telephone lines, massive mainframe computers. So Banka in
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: New York could transfer ten million dollars to bank b
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: in California in minutes. The FED acted as the ultimate clearinghouse,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: adjusting the digital ledgers instantly.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: They also ran the automated clearinghouse, the ACH. It handled
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: five hundred and eighty five million transactions that year, mostly
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: recurring things like you know, Social Security payments or military.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Payrolls, seah, all the background stuff.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Think of the FED like a massive national cardiovascular FED
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: wire is the main artery. It pumps four hundred and
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: thirty five billion dollars a day in high pressure digital blood.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: The physical cash is the capillary network. It reaches out
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: into every single pocket, every tip jar, every cash register
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: in the country.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it, and that capillary
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: network requires incredible logistics. The nineteen eighty six budget projected
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: paying sixteen point five billion individual physical notes into circulation.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: But you mentioned oversight earlier. The FED is not just
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: a bank. It is the financial police force.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: This is where the nineteen eighty five report reads less
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: like a boring budget and more like a financial thriller.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Let's look at where the FED actually spends its operating budget.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Sixty one percent goes to basic services, check clearing, currency distribution,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: things you'd expect, But in nineteen eighty six, there is
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: a massive anomaly, a sudden spike in a specific category.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Supervision costs jumped to fifteen percent of their total budget.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Why does sudden scramble for more cops on.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: The beat, Well, because the system was cracking. The report
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: outlines these intense localized economic crises, specifically in the agricultural
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: and energy sectors. Oil prices were wildly unstable, Farmland values
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: were just collapsing.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: So banks had handed out massive loans to oil drillers
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and farmers in the late seventies and early eighties, and
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: when those markets crashed, the borrowers could not pay.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly, The banks were suddenly holding billions in toxic paper,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: and the federal reserve districts in Dallas, Kansas City, and
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: San Francisco were at ground zero. For this, they had
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: to scramble to prevent a domino effect of bank failures.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: So they had to rapidly hire emergency.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Staff, tons of them.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Kansas City alone added sixty four new positions just for
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: bank supervision. Dallas projected a fifty six percent increase in
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: on site bank exams.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: They weren't just sitting in boardrooms, they were sending human
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: examiners into these failing local banks to audit the books.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Right, They established special monitoring units. They were policing a
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: failing system to prevent a total regional collapse.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: It really highlights the dual nature of the FED. They
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: manage the pristine, abstract flow of trillions, but they also
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: have to get their hands dirty when the ground level
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: economy fractures completely. So you have this multi billion dollar machine.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It monitors electronic trillions, it polices failing banks, But how
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: does it actually decide it's time to physically print more cash?
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: We have digital ledgers, why fire up the printing presses
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: at all?
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: That brings us to the order. The Federal Reserve Board
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: officially places the print order.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: They send it to the US Treasuries Bureau of Engraving
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: and Printing the beep.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: They do this every single year.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: The order is intensely specific, isn't it?
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: Oh? Very It is broken down strictly by denomination.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: They decide exactly how many ones, fives, tens, and hundreds
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: they need for the upcoming year.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And you know, you might assume they base this on
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: economic growth. You might think the economy is booming, we
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: are creating new wealth. Therefore, we must print more money.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Right, And that is the most common misconception about currency.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: People think the printing press creates wealth.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: It does not.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: It's entirely Wrong's look at the actual criteria. The FED
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: bases the order on three things, expected public demand, the
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: issuance of a new design, and inventory management. But here
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: is the truly surprising fact. Eighty five percent of all
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: new notes printed every year are not expanding the money
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: supply at all, not at all. They are simply printed
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: to replace dead.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Money, pure replacement, unfit, destroyed or mutilated currency. Only fifteen
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: percent of the print order actually meets the new public demand.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Cash is just highly perishable. It rips, it burns in
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: house fires, it accidentally goes through the washing machine, It
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: gets taped back together until it literally falls apart in
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: your hand.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Fed is engaged in this constant, invisible war
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: of attrition. They pull dead money out of the ecosystem,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: and they inject fresh greenbacks just to keep the baseline stable.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: How do they even know a bill is dead? Is
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: there some guy sitting at a desk inspecting every dollar
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: that comes back to the bank.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: No, it's entirely automated.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Now, When commercial bank send surplus cash back to the
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: regional federal reserve banks, the cash goes through these high
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: speed sorting machines.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: And these machines are incredible.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: I bet they evaluate every single note at a rate
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: of tens of thousands of bills an hour. They check
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: for counterfeits, obviously, but they also check the physical integrity
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: of the paper. If a bill is too limp, too dirty,
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: or torn, the machine doesn't just reject it, It shreds
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: it instantly, right there on the spot.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Wow, it just executes.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: The money exactly, and that destroyed note generates to data point.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: The FED aggregates all those data points to calculate the
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: exact replacement volume needed for the next printing order.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: If eighty five percent of the effort is just replacing
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: dead bills, what happens if we stop using cash? I
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: mean that shift to digital is massive. I pay for
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: my coffee with my phone. I split dinner with an app.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Does the physical printing press just slowly grind to a
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: halt or will we always need that tactile back?
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Well, the demand for physical US currency globally actually continues
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: to rise.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Really yes, especially for hundred dollar bills.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: But you raise a critical point about the tactile backup.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Physical currency acts as the ultimate settlement layer for the individual.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: It works when the power goes out, it works when
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: the cell network is down. It requires no third party
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: verification to hand someone a twenty dollars bill. It's frictionless
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: peer to peer settlement.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: So the physical object still matters deeply, very much. So okay,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: so the order is placed. The FED says, we need
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: a billion new quarters and a billion new ten dollars bills.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: But before the factory machines roar to life, someone has
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: to actually design the object. Let's start with coins. How
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: does a theoretical idea become a physical quarter?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: It starts with bureaucracy, of course. Congress passes a law
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: authorizing a new coin. Stakeholders issue their requirements. Maybe it's
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: a commemorative series, maybe it's a new portrait.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Then the artists finally take over us. Mint sculptor engravers
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: step in. They also invite external artists from the Artist
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: and Fusion program. They begin researching. They begin drawing. But
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: they don't just sketch a tiny circle on a notepad,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: do they No, they.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Create massive plaster models of the design. These plaster models
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: are nearly five times the size of the actual coin.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Imagine sculpting a quarter, but it is the size of
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: a large dinner plate.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Why do they need to work at that massive scale precision?
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: You cannot sculpt the microscopic details of a face on
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: a canvas the size of a coin. You need the
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: scale of the plaster to perfect every strand of hair,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: every curve of every letter. Later, that massive design will
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: be digitally reduced to the exact millimeter dimensions.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: Of the coin.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: But great art isn't enough. The design has to survive
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: a brutal gauntlet. First is the legal review. Does it
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: meet the requirements of the law. Does it follow copyright laws?
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: Right? You can't just put a trademarked logo on.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: A nickel exactly The Mints chief engraver also provides feedback
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: for artistic improvements. Then comes my absolute favorite part of
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the process, the coinability.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Check coinability it is a highly technical engineering review.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I just love that term. It's like the engineers looking
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: at the artists and saying, sure, your sculpture is beautiful,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: it belongs in a museum, but will it survive being
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: smashed by one hundred tons of solid steel. If not
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: back to the drawing board. What exactly are they looking
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: for in a coinability check.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: They are analyzing the physics of metal flow. When a
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: coin is struck, the metal physically moves. If the letters
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: in the design are too small or placed too close together,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: the metal won't flow into the crevices of the die cleanly.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: The letters will look blurry.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Ah. They also look at the relief right the height
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: of the design exactly.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: If the relief is too high, it requires too much
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: pressure to force the metal up into the deepest parts.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Of the die.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: This causes extreme stress on the equipment. The dyes will
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: crack prematurely. The metal has to flow seamlessly across the
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: entire surface in a fraction of a second. If the
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: design fights the physics of the metal, it fails the
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: coinability check.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Once it passes the engineers, it goes back to the bureaucrats.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: The Citizens Coinage Advice Committee reviews the portfolios. The Commission
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of Fine Arts weighs in. They make their recommendations. Finally,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the Secretary of the Treasury chooses the ultimate winner. The
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: design is locked in. The giant plaster model is digitized.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Now it is time for the brute force of manufacturing.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Right, we move from the quiet artist studio to the
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: deafening factory floor.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: This is the heavy metal segment, the violent birth of
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: a quane. How do we get from raw material to
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: pocket change?
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: So the US mint does not mine its own metal.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: It buys precious metal alloys in massive coiled strips. Imagine
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: a roll of tape, but it is solid metal, weighing
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: thousands of pounds.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: You feed these massive strips into a blanking press. This
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: press violently punches out raw circular metal discs. These raw
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: discs are called blanks. But you can't just throw a
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: raw blank into the final coin press.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Right, absolutely not. The punching process is rough. It leaves burrs, jagged,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: sharp edges.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: On the metal.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: If you put a jagged blank into a high speed press,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: it will jam the feeder, It could gouge the machinery.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: So you have to refine them. Step two is riddling.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: They dump the fresh blanks into massive tumbling screens. They
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: sip them, they vibrate them. This catches the bad ones
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: off size pieces, misshapened discs. It separates the perfect circles
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: from the.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Scrap, and once they are riddled, they face extreme heat
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: and kneeling.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: We are putting metal in a giant furnace. Why does
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: it clean them?
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: No? Anneeling actually changes the physical properties of the metal itself.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Remember, you are about to strike this metal with up
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: to one hundred tons of force.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: If the metal is cold and hard, it is brittle,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: It will resist the strike, It will shatter the coin die.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: You have to soften it like a blacksmith heating a
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: horseshoe and a forge before hitting it with a hammer.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: The furnace alters the crystalline structure of the alloy. It
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: relaxes the atoms. It makes the metal soft enough to
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: flow like a highly viscous liquid when it gets hit.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: But the furnace leaves the blanks covered in a dark,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: ugly scale. They look ruins. They go through a chemical wash.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: This strips away the fullness residue and restores that bright,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: shiny surface we expect on a coin. They are soft,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: they are clean. Are they ready for the strike?
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: Not yet? They need a rim? Okay.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: They run through a machine called the upsetting mill. This
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: machine squeezes the edges of the blank, pushing the metal
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: up to form a raised rim around the circumference Why.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Does a coin need a rim? Is it just for looks?
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: The rim serves two critical engineering functions. First, during the
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: violence strike, that rim acts like a retaining wall.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: It contains the.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Outward flow of the metal, forcing it up into the
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: intricate details of the dye, rather than just squishing out
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: flat like a pancake.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Second, it protects the design. When the coin is jingling
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: in your pocket, the raised rim takes the friction. It
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: prevents the portrait of George Washington from rubbing completely flat
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: within a year.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Once it has that raised rim, the blank that's a promotion.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: It is no longer a blank. It is officially called
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a plan chet, a plant chat. Yes, and the plantchet
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: is finally ready for the strike. They are fed into
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: a machine called the feeding hopper. This is where the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: magic and the extreme violence happens.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Massive electric and hydraulic presses take over. These presses hold
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: the coin dies. The dye is a cylinder of hardened steel.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: The face of the dye has the exact inverse of
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: the coin design engraved into it. The relief is carved
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: backward and deep into the steel.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: The press slams the upper and lower dies into the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: plantchet simultaneously. We are talking about thirty five to over
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: one hundred tons of pressure in a fraction of a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: single second boom, And this.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: Goes back to the cornability check.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Under that immense pressure, the solid metal plantchet acts almost
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: like water for a microsecond. The metal floods into every
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: microscopic group, every letter, every strand of hair engraved in
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: the dye.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: It does not just stamp the metal, It reforms the metal.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: You have to heat the alloy to soften it so
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: you can punch it with one hundred tons of force.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Does the modern US mint sound more like a medieval
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: blacksmith's forged anyone else? It is sheer brute force.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: It is the definition of brute force, and that force
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: destroys the tools. Striking steel against metal with one hundred
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: tons of pressure over and over again causes.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Immense wear and tear. The dyes crack, they flatten.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: They fail, so the mint has to constantly manufacture new
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: dyes just to keep the presses running.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: They have a whole hierarchy of tooling. The master hub
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: creates the master dye. The master dye creates multiple working hubs.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: The working hubs create hundreds of working dies. They need
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: a massive constant supply of working dyes because the striking
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: process is so violently destructive.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: And there's also a huge difference between the quarters jingling
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: in your pocket and the coins made for serious collectors.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, huge different.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Circulating coins are all about speared mass production. They zoom
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: through the press. They get a single violent strike, boom,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: done next.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: But the mint also produces proof coins. These are premium products.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: They require a pristine mirror like background finish and impossibly
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: sharp frosted detail.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: You cannot mass produce a proof coin. You cannot just
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: dump them in a hopper. They are hand fed into
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: a specialized press. They are struck multiple times, carefully exsctly.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: The extra strikes ensure the metal fills even the deepest
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: microscopic crevices of the die.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: After the strike, the standard circulating coins are dumped into
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: automated count of machines. They are funneled into large ballistic
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: bags or rolled. Then they are loaded onto heavily guarded
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: trucks and shipped out to the Federal.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Reserve for distribution into the economy.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: So coins require brute force. They're literally smashed into existence.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: But paper money, paper money is an entirely different beast.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: It requires a delicate, highly secured, deeply layered symphony of technology.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Let's leave the heavy metal of the mint and enter
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the paper Fortress, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing the BP.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Paper money is printed in only two places on the
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: entire planet, Washington, DC and that fortress we mentioned at
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: the very beginning of our journey, the facility and Worth, Texas.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: The fort Worth facility opened in nineteen ninety. It supplies
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: more than half of all US currency. Making a modern
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: dollar bill is not like hitting print on your office inkjet.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: It is a multi layered, highly paranoid security operation. The
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: first layer is offset printing.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Right if you look at a modern ten, twenty, or
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: fifty dollars bill, you will notice it is not just
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: green and black anymore. There are subtle background colors, peaches, blues, pinks.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Offset printing lays down those background colors.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: First, they use massive offset presses. These machines are industrial leviathans.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: They are fifty feet long, they weigh seventy tons. They
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: run at blistering speeds, printing ten thousand full sheets of currency.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Per hour, and precision is everything here. The face in
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: the back of the sheet are printed at the exact
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: same time. This ensures perfect alignment, or what printers call registration.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: The machines run so fast that the press operators have
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: to physically pull a sheet out of the line every
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: five hundred impressions. Just to visual we verify that the
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: ink alignment remains flawless.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Note that the one dollar and two dollar bills completely
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: skip the step. They don't get the fancy background colors.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: They are old school. But for the higher denominations, the
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: offset color is just the appetizer. The real magic happens next.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Itallio printing or plate printing.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Intaalio is the soul of American currency, and mechanically it
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: is completely backwards from how a standard printer works.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Right with a standard stamp or a printer, you put
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: ink on the raised surface and you press it flat
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: onto the paper. Intaio is the exact opposite. Imagine a
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: giant fifty seven ton waffle iron.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly the engraver's carve the design deep into a steel plate.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: The portrait of Lincoln or Jackson is composed of thousands
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: of deep recess grooves. Ink is applied heavily across the
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: entire plate. Then a mechanical wiper aggressively scrubs the flat
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: surface of the plate completely clean, so the.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Ink is left only hiding down inside those recessed grooves. Correct,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: So how do you get the ink out of the
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: grooves and onto the paper. You use pressure, terrifying amounts
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: of pressure. The blank paper is laid on top of
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the steel plate. The italiopress applies twenty tons of pressure.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: It literally forces the paper fibers down into the sharp
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: grooves of the steel. The paper grabs the wet ink
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: and pulls it out, and.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: The result is a physical transformation to the paper. The
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: ink does not just sit flat, It sits up on
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: top of the paper in three dimensional ridges.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: That is why cash has that specific crisp feel. If
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: you run your thumbnail over the jacket of Benjamin Franklin
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: on one hundred dollars bill, you can actually feel the ridges.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: You can identify genuine US currency blindfolded. It feels like
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: fine sand paper. You cannot replicate that texture with a
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: laser printer.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: The BP's andallio presses are monsters the way fifty seven tons.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: They also print ten thousand sheets an hour, But there's
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: a massive logistical bottleneck. In this process, you cannot print
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: the front and the back of the bill at the
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: same time with intaalio.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Why not they do it with the offset presses because.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Of the twenty tons of pressure. If you print both
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: sides simultaneously, the wet raised ink on the back would
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: instantly smash and smear into the press rollers when you
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: applied pressure to print the front.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, that makes sense. So they print the back of
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the bill first with the green ink. That is literally
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: where the historic term greenback comes from. But then everything stops.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: The printing process halts. The wet sheets are carefully stacked
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and transported into massive, highly secured drying vaults. They sit
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: in these working process vaults for three full days just
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: air drawing.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: The scale of this static inventory is just wild to
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: think about. A single vault in Fort Worth might hold
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: fifty to one hundred billion dollars in unfinished notes just
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: sitting on pallets. The DC facility can have up to
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: three hundred million dollars in process at any given moment.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: It is a fortune in hibernation.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: After three days, the green ink is finally cured. They
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: take the sheets out of the vaults. They run them
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: back through the entalio presses. This time they print the
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: black faces, the portraits of the presidents, the intricate borders, and.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: Then effect the vaults. They sit and drive for another.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Three entire days, six total days of drying. The printing
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: is finally done, but the BP cannot just chop them
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: up and ship them out. Now comes the high tech
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: finishing and inspection. They have to examine every single millimeter
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: of every single note to ensure absolute perfection. How do
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: you inspect millions of bills a day?
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: You build a custom optical network. These the Offline Currency
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Inspection System OCIS.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: OCIS is a battery of high resolution cameras integrated with
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: custom analytical software. It scans the giant uncut sheets at
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a speed of two point five sheets per second. The
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: software divides each individual note on the sheet into one
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five thousand digital pixels, that is four
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: million microscopic pixels per sheet. It completely analyzes both sides simultaneously.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: If a drop of ink is smeared by a fraction
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: of a millimeter, OCIS flags it. The machine has higher
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: visual standards than a diamond appraiser, and.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: The BP is always upgrading the arsenal They recently introduced
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: the larg Arge Examining Printing Equipment LPE.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: LP sounds like a friendly robot vacuum. It is not.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: It is a one hundred and forty four foot long
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: industrial behemoth. It is the size of half a football field.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Older machines printed on thirty two subject sheets. That means
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: thirty two individual bills arranged on one large sheet of paper.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: LPE is a massive efficiency upgrade. It prints on fifty
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: subject sheets.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: LP does everything at once. It examines the full fifty
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: subject sheet. It prints the unique serial numbers, It verifies
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the product quality, and cuts the sheets and packages the currency.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: It is an all in one factory line. Right now,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: LP is only used for the one dollar and five
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: dollar bills for.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: The older thirty two subject sheets. They use a different
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: machine for the final cut. Copet PACK it stands for
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Currency over Printing, Processing Equipment and Packaging.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: CODEPACK combines a rotary letter press with a terrifying set
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: of guillotine cutters stacks of one hundred sheets passed through
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: two sharp blades. First, a horizontal cut drops the blades,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: leaving the notes in horizontal pairs. Second, a vertical cut
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: slices them into individual note.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: The machine instantly gathers them into stacks of one hundred,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: wraps them with those tight paper denomination bans, and bundles
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: them into bricks.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: So let's pause and ask the obvious question here answer
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: why do we do all this? Why the fifty foot
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: offset machines, Why the fifty seven ton intallio presses that
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: require six days of drying time, Why the one hundred
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: and forty four foot long LPE machines and the four
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: million pixel inspection cameras.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: To stay one step ahead of counterfeiters. The entire process
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: is a physical deterrent. If a criminal wants to fake
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: a ten dollars bill on their home printer.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: It looks and feels like a fake.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: If an organized crime syndicate wants to truly forge a
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: perfect us dollar, they have to replicate a manufacturing process
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: that requires hundreds of tons of steel, highly restricted chemical inks,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: in billions dollars of infrastructure. The sheer cost of faking
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: the money makes faking the money nearly impossible.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Let's look closely at the finished product of all this paranoia,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the hidden landscape atom of a dollar. Take out a
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: bill right now, if you have one look closely at it.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: First, look at the paper itself. It is not normal
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: wood pulp paper. If it was, it would disintegrate in
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: the washing machine.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: It is actually a.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Highly durable textile, a blend of seventy five percent cotton
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: and twenty five percent linen.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Look closely at the blank white spaces on the bill.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Genuine currency paper has tiny red and blue security fibers
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: embedded right into the material. But look closely. They are
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: not printed on top of the paper. They are physically
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: woven into the fabric of the note during the paper
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: making process. You can take a pin and literally pick
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: a fiber out of the cotton.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: Then there's the microprinting.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Look at the border around the portrait. To the naked eye,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: it looks like a solid, thin black line, But put
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a magnifying glass over it. The line is actually microscopic text.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: It says USA or the United States of America, over
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and over again.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: This is a brilliant low tech defense mechanism. Commercial printers
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: and standard high end copiers simply cannot resolve text that
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: small blur together. If a counterfeiter scans the bill and
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: prints it, that microprinting just blurs into a solid muddy line.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Every note is also a tracking device. Look at the
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: serial numbers. They are not just random digits. They tell
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a story of origin.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: The first letter the serial number corresponds to the series
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: year the design was approved. For example, an E means
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: the series year is two thousand and four, a G
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: means two.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: Thousand and four A.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: The second letter of the serial number matches the specific
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: regional Federal Reserve bank that originally ordered it. Each of
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the twelve banks has a letter and number designation. A
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: one is Boston, B two is New York. If your
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: serial number starts with EB, it is a two thousand
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: and four series note ordered specifically by the New York FED.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: The government knows exactly where that piece of paper started.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: That's life. But the real arsenal of security features depends
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: on the denomination. The higher the value, the heavier the armor.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Let's start with the masterpiece of the beep, the twenty
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: thirteen hundred dollars bill.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: The one hundred is the most globally circulated and global
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: counterfeited note on Earth. It is the gold standard of
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: paper money, so it gets the absolute best technology. It
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: features a hidden water mark of Denjamin Franklin. On the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: right side. Hold it up to a light bulb, and
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: his ghostly face appears inside the blank cotton space.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: It also has the three D security ribbon. This is
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: the blue ribbon that looks like it is printed straight
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: down the middle of the bill.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: But it isn't printed, and it doesn't tape. The ribbon
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: is actually woven completely into the paper matrix. It dips
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: in and out of the fabric, and it has a
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: mesmerizing optical effect. If you tilt the note back and forth,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: the bells and the one hundred numerals inside the ribbon
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: shift side to side. How does a piece of ribbon
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: create a three D hologram?
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: It uses an incredible feak of micro optics. The ribbon
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: is embedded with hundreds of thousands of microscopic lenses. These
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: micro lenses magnify the tiny images printed on the layer
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: underneath them. As you tilt the bill, your angle of
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: vision through the lenses changes, shifting the focus. It creates
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: the optical illusion that the bells are physically dancing across
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: the surface. A home scanner cannot scan a microlens.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: It also features color shifting ink. Look at the copper
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: colored ink wall on the front of the hundred, tilt
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: the note up and down, and a green bell suddenly
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: appears inside the ink well. The ink literally changes color
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: based on the angle of the light. Is this a
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: chemical reaction?
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Pure optical physics? The ink itself contains millions of microscopic
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: metallic flakes. These flakes act like tiny prisms suspended in
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: the fluid. When light hits the flake, it refracts. Depending
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: on the angle of your eye, the wavelength of the
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: light shifts. You hold it flat, the physics dictate you
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: see copper, you tilt it, the angle changes, and the
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: refraction hits your eye as green.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Incredible. The twenty dollar bill from two thousand and three
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: has its own tricks. It has the Andrew Jackson portrait,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: but it also has a hidden UV security thread.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: If you shine an ultra violet black light on a twenty,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: a glowing green plastic thread appears from nowhere. It runs
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: vertically down the left side. It says USA twenty right
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: on the glowing thread.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: It also has a color shifting numeral twenty in the
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: bottom right corner. It shifts from copper to green. The
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: ten dollar bill from two thousand and six has the
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton watermark. It has its own color shifting ink
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: and highly specific microprinting, and.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: The five dollar bill from two thousand and eight features
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln, but it actually has two different water marks
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: hidden in the paper.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: It has a large numeral five hidden in the blank
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: space on the right, but it also has a column
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: of three smaller fis hidden to the left of the portrait.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: It also features a security thread that glows brilliant blue
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: under UV light.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: The level of engineering is profound. The mint and the
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: beep are constantly inventing new physics tricks, micro lenses and
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: chemical optical illusions.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Just to protect a piece of paper.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: With all the microprinting, the woven three D ribbons, the
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: metallic color shifting, inc it sounds like modern money is
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: closer to a silicon microschift than a piece of paper.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: It is a highly engineered, deeply physical technology. But let's
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: connect this back to the bigger picture. We started this
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: journey looking at the nineteen eighty five FED report Electronic
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Transfers DWARF physical cash. Fedwire moved four hundred and thirty
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: five billion dollars a day forty years ago. It moves
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: trillions today. Most of our wealth is just digits on
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: a server. Our counterfeiters even bothering with paper mills and
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: offset presses anymore. Is this incredible physical security system. The
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: fifty seven ton presses and the micro lenses just fighting
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the last war.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: The battlefield is absolutely expanded. The modern bank heist does
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: not involve a vault and a ski mask. It involves cybersecurity,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: hacking the international Swift network, phishing campaigns, and crypto scams.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: The digital thieves steal billions with keystrokes from laptop halfway
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: around the world.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: But the physical war never ended. Counterfeiting physical cash is
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: still a massive, multi billion dollar global enterprise. Hostile nations
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: forge highly accurate super dollars to bypass international economic sanctions.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Organized crime rings, cartels, and human traffickers use physical cash
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: because it leaves absolutely no digital footprint. Long as physical
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: cash offers absolute anonymity and peer to peer settlement without
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: a network connection, it will be a high value target.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: The fifty seven ton inalio presses are fighting the ground war.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: The cybersecurity teams monitoring the fedwire networks are fighting the
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: air war. Both are critical to the survival of the economy.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Three Well said, we've traveled an incredible distance today. We
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: started in the macroeconomic boardrooms of the Federal Reserve. We
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: mapped the invisible flow of global demand, the trillions and
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: digital blood pumping through fedwire, and the panic of bank
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: examiners racing into Dallas to audit failing agricultural loons.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: We walked into the quiet artists studios, where giant plaster
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: coins are sculpted by hand. We watch those delicate designs
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: survive the brutal physical engineering test of coinability.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: We stood under the deafening roar of one hundred ton presses,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: blanking metal, riddling burrs, softening crystalline structures and furnaces, and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: smashing plan sheds into quarters. In a fraction of a microsecond,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: we walked.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Through the Texas Vaults on Blue Mound Road, surrounded by
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Federal police and tire spikes, holding seven billion dollars in
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: green bags, drying in the dark for days on end.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: We watched fifty seven ton in tallio machines act as
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: giant waffle irons, forcing paper into microscopic trenches to give
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: money its distinctive sandpaper feel. And we magnified the microscopic
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: words hiding in plain sight on a five dollar bill.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: The sheer physical effort, the raw violence, and the microscopic
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: precision required to manifest the abstract concept of value into
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: reality is staggering.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Is an incredible intersection of art, heavy industry, and optical physics.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: So do this today. Take a dollar out of your wallet,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: any bill, Rub your thumb over the portrait. Feel the
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: raised and taalio in grabbing your skin. Look closely at
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the white space for those tiny red and blue fibers
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: permanently embedded in the linen.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: Think about the one hundred ton strikes, the four million
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: pixel inspection cameras analyzing every dot, the color shifting ink
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: wells refracting light.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Think about the millions of dollars of security tech required
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: just to prove to you and to the person you
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: hand it to, that this piece of paper is worth
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: exactly what it says it is. It begs a fascinating question.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: If eighty five percent of our money printing effort is
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: just replacing worn out bills, If the vast majority of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: real wealth is slowly migrating to frictionless, weightless digital networks,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: existing only as pixels on your phone screen, what happens
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: to our psychology?
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: Of wealth when money loses its physical weight.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly when you look at a number on a screen,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: it doesn't have the smell of the fort Worth factory.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: When you swipe a plastic card or tap a phone,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: you don't feel the sharp edges of the entalio ink.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: You don't feel the heft of the metal. When you
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: can no longer physically feel the money, when it requires
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: absolutely no physical force to create, does money still mean
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the same thing to the human brain. Keep questioning the
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: everyday objects around you, even the ones hiding in your pocket.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: We'll catch you on the next exploration of beyond infographics