EuroBillTracker

EuroBillTracker (EBT) is the website of a project that aims to track euro banknotes around Europe and around the world.

Features

The EuroBillTracker project was born with the introduction of the euro, on January 1, 2002, inspired by Where's George? The name EuroBillTracker is derived from euro and the terms Bill and Tracker.

Since each banknote is a unique item, based on its printing code and series, EBT serves as a platform to follow the steps of the banknotes throughout their circulation. Each participant registers in the database the serial numbers and location information of each bill that passes through your hands, from which you obtain:

• Ticket information: The place where the ticket was printed and the country for which it is intended.
• Follow-up information: When a ticket is introduced for the second time, users who previously recorded it receive a notice that informs them of the event. These matches —milestones- are available in the statistics section.
• Dissemination information: The website collects information about the circulation of euro tickets through the eurozone.
• Statistics and rankings: The website generates a multitude of graphics, maps and statistics on the circulation of euro tickets. In addition, it generates a series of rankings on the use of the web Who introduces more tickets? What are the countries or cities that record more tickets? What has been the longest journey of a ticket?...

The ownership of the EuroBillTracker website and database rests with the European EuroBillTracker Association, a non-profit organization that is in no way affiliated with the European Union, the European Central Bank, the National Bank from any country, nor to any other bank or financial entity. The Association certifies that the use of EuroBillTracker is and will remain free of charge.

Operation

Eurobilltracker allows us to follow the steps of the banknotes that pass through our hands. Its dynamics are as follows: users simply have to register on the Eurobilltracker website the printing code and serial number of the banknotes that pass through their hands, and wait for another user to find them: this coincidence is called hit. Every time a user has a match - a hit - they will know the exact place from where the ticket they have in their hands came from, and they will know how many kilometers it has traveled and in how much time.

The site also keeps track of triple hits, quadruple and quintuple hits; As a curious note, until February 2018, only 18 quintuple hits have been recorded in all countries.

Presence

The project was born with the arrival of the euro, and from the beginning it became very popular in Finland - a country in which 1 in every 60 banknotes in circulation is registered -, to later take root in the Netherlands and Central Europe. Today the page has more than 196,000 users throughout Europe, who have registered more than 152 million banknotes, the equivalent of more than 2.8 billion euros. In Spain, its more than 11,650 users have registered more than 5 million banknotes in 6,000 different towns.

Finland is the country with the highest number of users, 35,600, while Germany is the country where the most banknotes have been registered, 64 million. As far as cities are concerned, Helsinki followed by Lisbon are the locations where EBT has the most users. While Vienna and Berlin are the cities with the highest number of tickets tracked.

Statistics

As of January 1, 2020:

• Total value of registered tickets: 3 529 000€
• Number of users: 193 200
• Number of banknotes registered: 192 008 000
• Number of milestones (registered anklets more than once): 1 106 008

Banknotes registered per year

• 2002: 531 072
• 2003: 1 016 336
• 2004: 3 320 804
• 2005: 7 374 556
• 2006: 10 843 152
• 2007: 13 703 089
• 2008: 14 820 564
• 2009: 16 184 975
• 2010: 15 163 274
• 2011: 14 702 279
• 2012: 14 216 823
• 2013: 13 657 833
• 2014: 13 007 660
• 2015: 12 462 554
• 2016: 11 768 657
• 2017: 10 409 930
• 2018: 9 603 394
• 2019: 9 172 108
• 2020: 7 532 680
• 2021: 7 776 114
• 2022: 8 026 671

Countries

As of January 1, 2020, the countries that have registered the most banknotes for tracking are:

The 10 countries in which the EBT project has the greatest number of users are, in this order: Finland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Austria and Slovenia.

Cities

As of January 1, 2020, the five cities in which the highest number of tickets have been registered are:

In addition, one million banknotes have been registered in the following cities: Bochum, Nuremberg, Klagenfurt, Helmbrechts, Munich, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Erfurt, Kouvola, Lisbon, Hilden, Tampere, Linz, Ljubljana and Graz.

For their part, the 10 towns with the highest number of participants in the EBT project are -in this order-: Helsinki, Lisbon, Paris, Vienna, Tampere, Espoo, Madrid, Berlin, Turku and Oulu.

Other modalities

There are other similar game modes:

• Where's George?: Persecute US Dollar Tickets.

• Where's Willy?: Similar to Where's George? but with Canadian dollar bills.

• Bookcrossing: In this case the idea is to release books by leaving them in public places to be collected by other readers, who will then do the same.

• Bike Crossing: It is the practice of fixing used bicycles and leaving them in central places for other users to collect and use them. There is no specific monitoring of the vehicle but through the web there is participation in the process.

• Postcrossing: A platform that facilitates the exchange of postal cards throughout the world.

• Geocaching: System that uses GPS to locate treasures hidden by other users.