You probably have one in your wallet right now,
or maybe it's just crumpled up in the bottom
of a backpack somewhere. You hand it over for
a couple of coffees, or you pull it out of an
ATM, and you really don't give it a second glance.
I'm talking about... the United States $20 bill.
Which is something we just take for granted.
Exactly. But you aren't just holding a simple
piece of paper. Today, we're doing a deep dive
into the Wikipedia archives to find out why.
Because looking through the source material on
this, our mission today is to take this totally
mundane piece of currency and uncover a story
of wealth. profound historical irony. Oh, definitely.
And secret anti -counterfeiting tech hidden right
in plain sight. Not to mention Broadway musicals
and a decades long cultural debate. It really
is a remarkable narrative. I mean, we tend to
view money as purely functional, right? Just
a simple medium of exchange. But if you actually
stop and analyze a banknote, it becomes this
physical record of a nation's history, its technological
anxieties, and really its evolving values. Yeah.
And to really appreciate the history here, I
think we need to ground ourselves in the physical
reality of the bill first. Because despite handling
these things constantly, most people have absolutely
no idea what they're actually holding. You think
it's paper, right? Right. Most people do, yeah.
But it's not. It is essentially made out of the
same stuff as a really durable summer wardrobe.
The $20 bill is a blend of 75 % cotton and 25
% linen. Which is exactly why it survives going
through the washing machine when you forget to
empty your pockets. Oh, I've done that so many
times. We all have. Yeah. If the treasury used
traditional wood pulp paper, like, you know,
the kind in a notebook or a newspaper, the bill
would disintegrate from sweat and friction and
moisture in a matter of weeks. Wow. Yeah. That
specific cotton linen textile blend gives it
a distinct tactile feel. It has this snap that
bank tellers and merchants can actually feel.
It's really the very first line of defense against
a counterfeiter trying to print money on standard
printer paper. Right. So it's fabric, essentially,
which makes me wonder about the actual logistics
of its circulation. I've always been curious,
how long does one of these fabric rectangles
actually survive in the wild before it literally
just falls apart because they are changing hands
constantly, getting shoved into dip jars, folded
up? It's actually longer than you might think.
According to Federal Reserve data, this is from
December 2018, the average lifespan of a $20
note in circulation is 7 .8 years. Wait, almost
eight years? Yeah, it endures nearly eight years
of being passed around before it becomes too
worn out. And at that point, the Federal Reserve
pulls it from circulation and shreds it. That
is wild. And here's a fun, tactile detail for
you from the sources. When the Federal Reserve
banks bundle and deliver brand new $20 notes
to commercial banks, they don't just use generic
rubber bands, they come wrapped in very specific
violet straps. Violet straps? Yeah, it's part
of a standardized color coding system. It helps
bank tellers instantly identify the denomination
of a stack of cash just by looking at it. Violet
straps. I love that detail. OK, so we know the
physical bill is tough. It lives for nearly eight
years out there in the world. But while the physical
makeup of the 20 is fascinating, the face printed
on it introduces a completely different kind
of story. And honestly, it's a deeply ironic
one. You're referring to Andrew Jackson, of course,
the seventh president of the United States whose
face has been plastered on the front of the note
since 1928. OK, let's unpack this, because the
historical irony here is massive. Putting Andrew
Jackson on the $20 bill is like putting a famous
militant vegetarian on the logo of a steakhouse.
That is a great way to put it. It makes absolutely
no sense if you look at his actual political
career. Why would Jackson have absolutely hated
this honor? What's fascinating here is that Jackson
was fundamentally and vehemently opposed to the
very concept of paper money. He hated paper money.
Oh, completely. He was a champion of hard money,
meaning physical gold and silver coins. He deeply
distrusted central banking, and he specifically
despised the second bank of the United States,
which was the closest thing the country had to
a central bank at the time. So the guy whose
face is literally synonymous with paper money
spent his presidency trying to destroy the institution
that managed paper money. Exactly. It was a defining
conflict of his administration, known to historians
as the Bank War. So, Nicholas Biddle, the president
of the second bank in the United States, actually
defied Jackson and requested the renewal of the
bank's charter early. Oh, wow. Right during an
election year, too. Jackson took this as a direct
personal challenge. He made it the primary goal
of his administration to destroy the national
bank. He vetoed the charter renewal and he began
pulling all federal funds out of the national
bank and redistributing them to various state
banks. But wait, how does closing a central bank
cause a massive economic crisis? Because those
feel like two different things. If the money
just moved to state banks, why does it matter?
Think of the central bank as the adult in the
room, keeping the smaller state banks in check.
When Jackson killed the second bank, he removed
that central regulatory force. Oh, okay. Suddenly,
these state banks, which were often called pet
banks, started printing their own paper money
like crazy. and they were handing out highly
speculative loans to anyone who wanted to buy
land out west. So just flooding the market. Exactly.
It felt like free money, which directly fueled
a massive real estate bottle in the mid -1830s.
But then Jackson issued something called the
Specie Circular. The Specie Circular? What is
that? It was an order that required government
land to be bought with hard gold or silver, not
this newly printed paper money. Oh, I see. So...
He essentially popped his own bubble. He really
did. He let them print the paper money, but then
refused to accept it when it came time to actually
pay the government. Precisely. The sudden demand
for gold and silver caused a massive credit contraction.
People realized the paper money was backed by
nothing. The banks collapsed and the whole system
just snapped. This directly triggered the panic
of 1837, leading to a very deep and devastating
economic depression. That is wild. But to really
understand his view on money, we also have to
look at the world he came from. Right. He wasn't
operating in a modern financial system with digital
transfers in international markets. Not at all.
If we connect this to the bigger picture of Jackson's
mercantile heyday on the southwestern frontier,
the economy was incredibly rudimentary. Actual
hard currency like gold and silver coin was incredibly
scarce on the frontier. Right. The interchange
of goods was highly illiquid. People relied heavily
on barter for commercial transactions because
there simply wasn't enough coin to go around.
There was no common coin, which, according to
the sources, led to some incredibly dark economic
practices just to keep trade moving. Yes. The
source material points out a chilling reality
of that era. Lacking a common, reliable currency,
land speculators, merchants, and self -made lawyers
dealt in enslaved people. Wow. The text notes
that they used enslaved people almost as currency.
In Jackson's world, enslaved individuals were
embodied wealth. The historical record shows
they were considered the chief security, the
most saleable, and the major part of all agricultural
property. It is a stark reminder of the brutal
realities underpinning the early American economy.
Wealth wasn't just gold. It was human life treated
as capital and collateral, which makes his presence
on a modern bill even more complex. So I have
to push back here. Sure. If he caused a depression
by destroying the central bank, hated paper money
entirely, and came from an era with such a vastly
different barter and slave based economic model,
how on earth did he get on the bill in the first
place? Did someone at the treasury just have
a twisted sense of humor? That is the enduring
mystery. and his presence on the note was controversial
right from the start. Prior to 1928, currency
notes were actually physically larger. Yeah.
When the treasury transitioned to the smaller
modernized size we use today in 1928, Jackson
was abruptly placed on the 20, replacing Grover
Cleveland. And the Treasury Department's official
excuse for this in 1929 is almost laughable.
They claim they chose Jackson just based on familiarity
to the public. The New York Times ran an article
where the Treasury stoutly maintained that the
men chosen for these new small notes were placed
there purely because their faces were most familiar
to the majority of people. Right. They were incredibly
defensive about it, completely denying any political
motivation. Here's where it gets really interesting.
You're absolutely right to be skeptical. While
1928 did technically coincide with the one hundred
of Jackson's election as president, there is
zero surviving evidence in government archives
that this was a factor. Nothing at all. None.
Even more telling, recent inquiries to the U
.S. Treasury confirm that their records do not
reveal any actual documented reason why these
particular statesmen were chosen over others
of equal importance. It remains an arbitrary
bureaucratic decision that is just completely
lost to history. That is amazing. They just put
him on there and basically said, hey, he's famous,
don't ask questions. But while the face on the
bill might have been an arbitrary choice, the
actual design of the bill is anything but. The
physical notes we carry are basically a historical
record of what the government was terrified of
at any given moment. Let's look at the 1940s,
for example, when they were terrified of literal
invasion. Yes, the physical design is a living
document of security anxieties. In 1942, Right
in the thick of World War II, the government
issued a highly specific emergency series of
notes. The Hawaii notes. Correct. They featured
brown serial numbers instead of the usual green.
OK. And the word Hawaii was overprinted prominently
on both the front and the back in large block
letters. These were designed specifically to
circulate on the Hawaiian islands. The strategy
was that, in the event of a Japanese invasion
and occupation of Hawaii, the U .S. government
could instantly declare all notes with the Hawaii
overprint to be completely worthless. Wow. This
would prevent the invading forces from seizing
millions of dollars in U .S. currency to fund
their war effort. Hold on. How does that actually
work in practice? If I'm a shopkeeper or just
a regular citizen in Honolulu in 1942, do I just
wake up one morning, read the newspaper, and
realize my cash register is suddenly full of
worthless paper? How do you isolate a currency
geographically like that? It was a massive logistical
undertaking enforced by the military governor
of Hawaii at the time. Citizens and businesses
were ordered to physically turn in all their
regular mainland U .S. currency. Just hand it
over. Exactly. They were given these newly printed
Hawaii overprint notes in exchange. Ordinary
paper money was essentially outlawed on the islands.
It highlights how fragile the concept of fiat
currency can be during wartime. The value of
the money only existed because the military command
said it did, and they built a geographic self
-destruct mechanism right into the ink. That
is fascinating. The logistics alone are mind
-boggling. But as we move past the war, the changes
to the bill become much more subtle. Sometimes
they just reflect the literal passage of time,
like the update in 1948. Yes. In 1948, the rendering
of the White House on the reverse of the note
was updated. The initial engraving was done decades
earlier. The 1948 update was done partly to reflect
real -world architectural renovations, specifically
the addition of the Truman balcony. Right. But
more interestingly, the trees on the White House
lawn were actually re -engraved to look larger,
simply because the real trees had grown over
the intervening years. That is such a charming
detail. The engraving literally aged along with
the real landscaping, but then the design shifts
from landscaping to fundamental economics. In
1963, the $20 bill underwent a massive philosophical
change. Correct. Two major changes happened that
year. First, the motto, In God We Trust, was
added above the White House. But the second change
is the crucial economic one. OK. The explicit
promise printed on the bill to pay to the bearer
on demand and lawful money, which at that point
meant silver, was completely removed from the
front of the note. The legal tender designation
was shortened to just state that the note is
legal tender for all debts public and private.
Wait, so before 1963, my $20 bill was essentially
a coat check ticket. I could theoretically walk
into a bank, hand them this piece of paper, and
demand actual physical silver sitting in a vault
somewhere. You could? And one day the government
just decided, well, it's not a coat check ticket
anymore. Exactly. Before this, you were holding
a silver certificate or a note backed by physical
commodities. When they removed that clause, it
marked the full transition into modern fiat money.
The bill no longer represented a pile of silver
in a vault. It had value purely because the United
States government declared it had value and because
everyone using it agreed to trust that declaration.
And the source material notes that these two
acts, taking the currency off the silver backing
and authorizing the national motto, were coincidental,
even if they happened in the exact same redesign.
That is a massive conceptual leap for a society
to make. But once we accept fiat money, the treasury's
main obsession clearly shifts to an arms race
against counterfeiters. If the money is just
paper -backed by trust, you have to protect the
paper. Precisely. And from the 1990s onward,
the design evolution becomes heavily focused
on thwarting consumer technology. In 1998, The
note was completely redesigned for the first
time since 1929. Right. I remember that. They
use a much larger off -center portrait of Jackson
and change the White House view on the back from
the South Portico to the North Portico. But the
real story is the hidden tech. Which brings us
to the 2003 redesign. They added background shading
in faint green and peach, but they also added
something called the urine constellation. I had
never heard of this until we dug into the sources.
It is a brilliant piece of covert engineering.
On the back of the Modern 20, there are dozens
of faint yellow 20s scattered in the background.
But they aren't just decorative. They're arranged
in a highly specific mathematical pattern known
as the Irian Constellation. But how does a pattern
actually stop a counterfeiter? How does a machine
know what it's looking at? So the software developers
who build the firmware for modern color photocopiers,
scanners, and image editing software like Photoshop
actually program their machines to constantly
scan for this specific spatial arrangement of
dots. You're kidding! No, it's true. If the machine's
optical sensors detect the Urian constellation,
the firmware triggers an internal block. The
photocopier will literally refuse to copy the
image, often throwing an error king. or just
printing a blank page. It literally shuts down
the copy machine. Yeah. That is incredible. And
it's not just digital safeguards, right? There
are physical ones too, like the security strip.
Yes. If you hold a modern 20 up to a blacklight,
there is a plastic strip embedded directly into
the cotton and paper that glows bright green.
It also has the words USA 20 and a small flag
micro printed on it. It's wild that we are all
walking around with algorithm jamming patterns,
color shifting ink and glowing plastic in our
wallets, and we barely even notice it. So the
Treasury's main obsession over the last few decades
has clearly been this high tech security arms
race. But starting around 2015, they crashed
headfirst into a totally different priority,
a public that wanted the bill to actually reflect
modern American values, not just high tech security.
This represents a fundamental cultural shift.
For decades, the faces on the currency were static.
They were just accepted facts of life. But in
2015, a grassroots campaign called Women on Twenties
launched. I remember hearing about that. They
argued that it was time for a woman to be featured
on American paper currency. They surveyed over
600 ,000 people to choose a female candidate
to replace Andrew Jackson, explicitly aiming
for the year 2020. Which was the centennial of
the 19th Amendment, granting women the right
to vote. Exactly. And Harriet Tubman won that
poll. But the government didn't immediately say,
great, let's change the 20. In fact, Treasury
Secretary Jack Lew initially announced they were
going to put a woman on the $10 bill, replacing
Alexander Hamilton. Yes. In June 2015, that was
the official plan from the Treasury Department.
But wait, didn't a Broadway musical literally
alter the course of American currency here? Because
right around that exact time... It absolutely
did. The sudden, massive, and totally unprecedented
popularity of Lin -Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton
created a massive public outcry to keep Alexander
Hamilton on the $10 note. That is so funny. The
treasury was caught off guard by the cultural
phenomenon and ultimately reversed its decision.
So, in April 2016, Secretary Lew officially announced
that Hamilton would stay on the 10 and Harriet
Tubman would instead replace Andrew Jackson on
the front of the 20. With Jackson being relegated
to the reverse side of the bill, but making this
happen turned out to be much harder than just
holding a press conference. To understand the
subsequent delay, we have to look objectively
at the timeline across three different presidential
administrations. It is a fascinating study in
how political aspirations collide with bureaucratic
momentum. Let's walk through it. What happened
after the 2016 announcement? Well, during his
campaign, Donald Trump responded to the announcement
by calling the Tubman replacement pure political
correctness. Later in 2017, under his administration,
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin delayed the
visual reveal of the new design. Mnuchin stated
publicly that the $10 and $50 notes required
anti -counterfeiting updates first, which effectively
pushed the Tubman $20 bill decision to whoever
would be Treasury Secretary in 2026. Now at the
time, that was heavily criticized in the press
as a purely political move designed to protect
Andrew Jackson's spot on the bill. But our source
material points out an official investigation
actually complicated that narrative quite a bit.
That is a crucial detail to include. for a complete
picture. In June 2020, the Treasury Department's
Office of Inspector General released a comprehensive
report detailing an investigation into these
delays. The OIG report concluded that the $20
notes position in the overall redesign sequence
actually hadn't changed at all under the Trump
administration. Wait, really? It wasn't actually
delayed by Mnuchin? According to the Inspector
General, no. The OIG found that the Obama administration's
earlier announcement targeting the year 2020
was made entirely outside of the standard note
development governance structure. Oh, so it was
just an idea. It was an aspirational goal, not
a logistical one. The $10 note redesign was always
securely scheduled to precede the 20. And the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing never actually
expected the newly designed 20 to be production
ready until the year 2030, regardless of the
political announcements made in 2016. So the
2020 date was essentially political theater,
not operational reality. Which brings us to the
Biden administration. Did they speed it up? In
January 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen
Psaki claimed the new administration would explore
ways to accelerate the Tubman redesign process.
OK. However, The reality of the bureaucratic
and security machinery ultimately won out over
political desire. An internal department message
from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in 2022
had to reaffirm to staff that the debut day would
remain 2030, exactly as originally planned by
the structural timeline. So what does this all
mean? We have a public deeply invested in seeing
Harriet Tubman on the currency, multiple political
figures across different administrations promising
quick changes or reacting to public sentiment,
and then the reality of the printing presses
and security features just saying, no, this takes
a decade and a half. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, it reminds us that money is fundamentally
about trust. The government has a strict dual
mandate here. On one hand, it faces immense cultural
pressure to ensure that the symbols on its currency
reflect the evolving values, history, and demographics
of its citizens. On the other hand, the primary
overriding responsibility of the Treasury is
the physical security of the global economy.
Right, because you can't just slap a new portrait
on a bill if it inadvertently makes it easier
for a cartel to counterfeit it. The anti -counterfeiting
measures, you know, the wire marks, the urine
constellations, the glowing polymer strips. Testing
and implementing those technologies dictates
the timeline far more than any political wish
list. Exactly. The slow churning machinery of
government bureaucracy is often a feature. not
a bug when it comes to maintaining the unquestioned
integrity of the currency. They cannot afford
to rush a redesign and risk undermining global
faith in the US dollar. It is an incredible journey.
I mean, we have gone from 75 % cotton to the
frontier economies of the 1830s, where human
beings were tragically used as capital. We've
seen secret World War II geographic self -destruct
mechanisms, the end of the silver standard, all
the way to modern Broadway musicals dictating
policy and the slow grinding wheels of Washington
bureaucracy. It certainly changes how you look
at the cash sitting in your wallet. It really
does. Because the next time you pull a 20 out
of the ATM or hand it over for a quick cup of
coffee, remember, you aren't just holding a piece
of durable fabric. You are holding a piece of
profound historical irony. You're holding a canvas
of secret algorithm jamming anti counterfeiting
tech. And you are holding the center of a decade
long cultural debate about who we are as a nation
and whose faces deserve to represent our value.
It is a remarkable living artifact of our society.
Before we wrap up today, I want to leave you
with a final thought to mull over, building entirely
on something we talked about earlier. Remember
those 1942 Hawaii notes, the ones designed with
brown serial numbers and massive overprints so
the government could instantly render them worthless
in a geographic emergency by simply issuing a
decree. Right. The analog logistical self -destruct
mechanism. So exactly. Think about that mechanism
in the context of today. In our increasingly
digital cashless age, what would a modern emergency
overprint look like? Oh, wow. If a government
needed to instantly freeze or wipe out about
regional currency during a crisis today. They
wouldn't need a printing press or a military
governor collecting physical bills. They would
just need an algorithm. How would they deploy
it? And more importantly, what would that mean
for the privacy, the autonomy, and the true security
of the money we all think we own? Something to
think about the next time you casually tap your
card. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive.