My second clear memory of money is of finding it on the ground. This was a more common experience back when physical cash was the default payment method for small to medium transactions, but it was still rare enough to be an exciting thrill whenever it occurred. The amount in question that I found on this earliest occasion was $2. Not much, but $2 in the early 90's was worth at least double what it is now, and $2 always means more to a little kid than a grown adult. Laying in the grass on the side of the road, I had passed it by on the way to the corner store. In my peripheral vision, the soft brown of the Canadian $2 note didn't attract much attention among the dried maple leaves that littered the ground. I managed to spot it on my way home though, and it made my day. It is odd to consider now though, in the context of the ledger theory of money. In the dollar system, physical banknotes represent little pieces of the ledger that have broken off and started floating around in spacetime, opaque, untraceable until they pass through another surveillance checkpoint within the system. With a commodity money like gold, more or less the entire ledger is opaque. Each person knows only their own balance. A full reserve bank* would know the respective balances of each of their clients. But no one knows the full state of the ledger, anonymously or otherwise. This will always be the case for commodities, and illustrates the farcical nature of the notion of a "market capitalization" of gold. Physical banknotes are thus a curious anachronism, harkening back to commodity money systems of the past in their physicality and bearer nature. They still exist today in 2026 by virtue of our recent past, but I suspect that their days are numbered. If they didn't exist right now, they would never be allowed to be invented. Too opaque, too easy to transact with freely. If the fiat system was all we had, it would be a shame to see them go, but it's a moot point now. They served some kind of purpose within a rotten system, but we're ready to ditch that whole system now so it doesn't matter anyways. * It would be nonsensical to say that a fractional reserve bank** knows the respective balances of each of their clients, since these balances are fraudulent. They are akin to a quantum wave function, in that how much money any one particular person owns is undefined until a measurement is performed: a bank run. ** It should be noted that even fractional reserve banking basically doesn't exist anymore, in the sense of currency partially backed by gold or other valuable commodities. Modern day fiat currencies operate on a system of fictional reserve banking, by which is meant that all "reserves," fractional or otherwise, represent nothing of value and are created at no cost. It is with great irony that we note that, as of this writing, the only currency that claims to be partially backed by gold is the Zimbabwean ZiG, introduced in April of 2024 after the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar, and which has already lost around 50% of it's purchasing power in less than two years.