The bank creates zero-cost virtual cash and then earns interest by loaning it as if it was real! This is already questionable ethically, but the fact that they can do it but I can't, I have to pay the tithe to them... That's just wrong.

Correct me if I'm missing something :)

This all comes down to how safe and liquid people view the liabilities. Steve’s IOUs are at substantially higher risk of default than the banks checking account. There’s also not an easy or liquid market or facility for easily converting those IOUs to other money assets. Whereas with a checking account, I can just go to the ATM or send a wire transfer to another bank. With instruments like money market funds, I can easily sell the assets at the push of a button.

To a certain extent this is because the central bank guarantees the safety of the bank. Any gaps in a Wells Fargo checking account would just be made up by the Fed making the account holders whole with newly printed dollars.

But even absent that guarantee, the senior liabilities and term deposits of banks are considered pretty damn money like. That’s largely because banks as institutions bend over backwards to be as conservative and trustworthy as possible when it comes to their liabilities. A bank would never do the equivalent of spending a years income on a new car.

For example Berkshire Hathaway isn’t a bank and it’s not backed by the central bank. But when they issue 30 day commercial paper, then it’s treated as essentially equivalent to money. In fact there’s probably some in your money market fund right now.

Indeed, suppose you are a bank and you have $1 mil in deposits, which you keep as reserve with the central bank. Now someone asks for a $900k loan. Now you have $1.9 mil in deposits ($1.9 mil liabilities), and you have $1 mil kept with the central bank in cash, and $900k owed from the guy with the loan (total $1.9 mil in assets, it checks out).

Now the guy with the loan withdraws his $900k to pay for his house or whatever; the bank gives him the $900k from the cash account it has at the central bank. Now the bank has $1 mil in liabilities (the checking accounts of the depositors), $100k in cash with the central bank, and $900k owed from the guy with the loan. Everything still checks out, but now the cash on hand is just $10% of the assets. The bank has reached the fractional reserve limit, and it is not allowed to make any more loans.

The geometric sum to infinity ends up being 1/reserve_ratio; so if that's 10% in this example, the theoretical money creation is 10x.

If you had no bank deposits at all, and nobody ever saved money, saving is outlawed, you gotta spend it, you'd have 1M in total cash in the economy. It would be moving around a bunch, but if you froze the system and counted it, there's 1M available to be spent at any moment in time. Let's compare to 1M deposited in a bank. 900K of it is circulated to the house seller, etc... The total amount circulated follows the geometric sum.

But, if you freeze the system at any moment in time, there is NOT a geometric sum of money in cash or other places immediately available to be spent! Most of this is going to be in accounts with daily withdrawal limits, for instance. We're messing with time here much more than we're creating money - it's a bit of a magic trick, yes, but one that's based on "not everyone is going to want to move all their deposits at the same time, let's take advantage of that to make the system more efficient, at some risk of stability." Not based on infinitely printing money at retail banks. And the risk has, in the better part of the last century, been fine - it's distributed, it's insured, etc. We could have a big discussion about if it's gonna be ok for ever, but first, that's different from this claim of "banks have special privileges to create money that I wish I had."

And the bank still needs to make sure their loans were sensible and low-enough-risk - things have to balance up in the end as people do make various withdrawals at various points in time - and many of those loans also go into accounts at other institutions.

In a world without this sort of banking, you'd still have loans backed by other things, like interest and payment income, like credit cards, but not ones tied at all to deposits - and it should be pretty clear that credit card companies aren't printing money, they're just shuffling it around.

No. From the paper

>In reality, neither are reserves a binding constraint on lending, nor does the central bank fix the amount of reserves that are available.

Capital requirements are what constrain lending in the west (I think the Chinese government does try to control lending in part via a reserve requirement). For example, the "Core Tier 1 Capital Ratio" [0] is extremely important in this regard.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tier-1-capital-ratio.as...

It's one sentence but the context is that the whole paper is arguing against the textbook explanation of fractional reserve banking GP stated - the "two common misconceptions" stated in the introduction.

But according to that article it may be, because that bank will need to increase reserves to expand lending and acquiring them has a cost.

“But that does not mean that any given individual bank can freely lend and create money without limit. That is because banks have to be able to lend profitably in a competitive market, [……] whether through deposits or other liabilities, the bank would need to make sure it was attracting and retaining some kind of funds in order to keep expanding lending. And the cost of that needs to be measured against the interest the bank expects to earn on the loans it is making,“

how it works -> "if a bank has $1 million in deposits (of actual cash that people gave to the bank to put in their checking accounts) the bank can make $10 million in loans"

not how it works -> "if a bank has $1 million in deposits it can make only $900k in loans"

“By attracting new deposits, the bank can increase its lending without running down its reserves, as shown in the third row of Figure 2. Alternatively, a bank can borrow from other banks or attract other forms of liabilities, at least temporarily. But whether through deposits or other liabilities, the bank would need to make sure it was attracting and retaining some kind of funds in order to keep expanding lending.”

This is entirely the point. The money created goes back to the bank as deposits and new money is created on top of this.

i.e. 0.9^0+0.9^1+0.9^2+0.9^3+... = 10

It will typically end in another bank. Then the bank that gave you those $900k still has just $1m in reserves and cannot lend anymore. Unless it gets some deposits or additional funding from another bank (maybe the one where those $900k ended).

It seems we all agree that “if a bank has $1 million in deposits it can make only $900k in loans.” In the aggregate banking system there are now $900k more, some bank may use the reserves created by that deposit to lend $810k, etc.

That’s not the same as

how it works -> "if a bank has $1 million in deposits (of actual cash that people gave to the bank to put in their checking accounts) the bank can make $10 million in loans"

which is wrong.

The baking system as a whole is leveraged about 9:1 based on the previous example. A bank deposit is a bank deposit, regardless of which bank it is at.

"if the banking system as a whole has $1 million in deposits (of actual cash that people gave to the bank to put in their checking accounts) the system banking as a whole can make $10 million in loans" [and there will be in the end $11m in deposits in the banking system as a whole, offsetting the $1m in reserves and $10m in loans]

You said

"if a bank has $1 million in deposits (of actual cash that people gave to the bank to put in their checking accounts) the bank can make $10 million in loans" [which is wrong unless you assume that every loan remains in that bank as a deposit so the “banking system as a whole” case is recovered]

Of course that bank could get more reserves to be able to make additional loans. But then it could lend much more than $10m if it gets enough deposits/reserves! [One bank =/= The banking system as a whole]

Edit: by the way, I’m curious what is the thing in my previous comment that you find “simply wrong”.

It doesn't help that you're conflating the terms "deposits" and "reserves". Deposits are liabilities of the bank, while reserves are assets held in their account at the central bank.

If the banking system as a whole is leveraged 9:1, that implies each individual bank is leveraged approximately 9:1.

"Reserve Requirement Example As an example, assume a bank had $200 million in deposits and is required to hold 10%. The bank is now allowed to lend out $180 million, which drastically increases bank credit. In addition to providing a buffer against bank runs and a layer of liquidity, reserve requirements are also used as a monetary tool by the Federal Reserve. By increasing the reserve requirement, the Federal Reserve is essentially taking money out of the money supply and increasing the cost of credit. Lowering the reserve requirement pumps money into the economy by giving banks excess reserves, which promotes the expansion of bank credit and lowers rates."

  Liabilities : deposit $1m
  Assets : reserves $1m

  Liabilities : deposit $1m
  Assets : reserves $100k, loan $900k

Say you get an additional million in deposits, your bank has now

  Liabilities : deposits $2m
  Assets : reserves $1.1m, loan $900k

Alternatively, it could get funding from another source like borrowing from banks of issuing bonds. For example

  Liabilities : deposit $1m, bond $1m
  Assets : reserves $1.1m, loan $900k

> If the banking system as a whole is leveraged 9:1, that implies each individual bank is leveraged approximately 9:1.

One of the main points of the paper under discussion is that this doesn’t happen. Reserves are not a binding constraint on lending.

[0] I don’t know if it makes much sense to talk about whether it is “actual cash”. Maybe my employer took a loan to pay me, maybe not. Maybe it was in cash, maybe by cheque, maybe by bank transfer. Would that change anything?

Only Central Bank reserves and cash are considered "money" in this system. And I'm saying the "money" is leveraged 9:1 in our toy example, whereas you seem to be saying assets must always be greater than liabilities - which obviously I agree with. Since if they weren't, the bank would be insolvent.

"if a bank has $1 million in deposits (of actual cash that people gave to the bank to put in their checking accounts) the bank can make $10 million in loans"

What I say is that it can only make more that $900k in loans _if_ the deposits held at the bank grow above $1m. Which doesn’t normally happen when lending because the most likely outcome is that the borrower takes the money out of the bank.

The reserves of the bank go down in that case, don’t you agree? They are just $100k after the $900k loan is made (and transferred away). $100k are the minimal reserves required when a bank has $1m in deposits.

Again, an individual bank is not the same as the banking system as a whole.

And I don’t quite get your remark about reserves. What I called “reserves” could be entirely held at the central bank (or in the vaults!) if the bank wanted to. Do you have an issue with those balance sheets?

My only point was individual banks, can lend up to whatever the reserve requirement is. If it was 10%, $1M in reserves at the central bank means the bank can could make $10M worth of loans. Do we disagree on this point?

It seems like we're arguing about what is actually money.

I agree that bank can lend up to whatever the reserve requirement is. But the next sentence is extremely misleading at best.

For that bank with $1m in deposits and $1m in reserves before any lending that 10% requirement means that it can not let its reserves go below 100k (10% times $1m in deposits) so it can only lend up to $900k out.

I can agree if you say "the bank can make $9m worth of loans provided that the recipients of the loans never get them of the bank [and it ends with $10m in deposits]". That is reasonable (even approximatively true) for the banking system as a whole but is a ridiculous implicit assumption for an individual bank.

I would also agree if you said "a bank with $10m in deposits needs to have at least $1m in reserves".

The bank can make $9m worth of loans (actually the bank can make any amount of loans, maybe even more), and some proportion of that may be transferred to other banks as reserves, and some other reserves will be transferred onto the banks balance sheet from unrelated transactions the bank makes. Then at the end of the day if the bank needs more reserves, it borrows them. The likely amount the bank needs to borrow based on the loans it makes and the cost of that reserve borrowing determines how many loans it will make. If it wouldn’t be profitable to make more, it’ll stop.

At no point does the bank only make 900k of loans so that it is fully covered in case all its loans are transferred out. The whole thesis of the paper is that that way of thinking is backwards.

The amount of reserves can (and will) go up and down for an individual bank as it operates depending on their strategy.

10x the initial reserves has no particular meaning for an individual bank, only for the whole system (and the whole thesis of the paper is that even then the 10x number doesn't really matter).

To go back to your previous point

> For that bank with $1m in deposits and $1m in reserves before any lending that 10% requirement means that it can not let its reserves go below 100k (10% times $1m in deposits) so it can only lend up to $900k out

This just doesn’t make any sense. The whole point of the reserve requirement is to guard against the risk that depositors will withdraw enough money at once to deplete the reserves. The bank needs to meet the reserve requirement of deposits on its balance sheet, not a theoretical future balance sheet. You’re explaining it as if the reserve requirement applies after the theoretical worst possible bank run occurs.

Say the debtor moves all their money to another bank as per your example. Now the bank has 1m deposits and 100k reserves. Now those other depositors also move 100k to another bank, so the bank has no reserves. Uh oh - making that 900k loan actually allowed the banks reserves to drop below the requirement in this theoretical eventuality!

Does that mean the bank shouldn’t have made the loan? No, because the reserve requirement applies to their current balance sheet. When the bank had 1m deposits and 1m reserves, it could make 9m loans. At this point it has 10% reserved (designed to guard against the eventuality that those debtors all withdraw their money). If the bank makes 900k loans and they are withdrawn, it has 1m deposits and 0.1m reserves. It is now in exactly the same situation as the previous example (scaled down). The bank doesn’t need to wait for this unlikely event to happen to allow its reserves to drop to 10%, it can just make the extra loans in the first place.

> This just doesn’t make any sense. The whole point of the reserve requirement is to guard against the risk that depositors will withdraw enough money at once to deplete the reserves. The bank needs to meet the reserve requirement of deposits on its balance sheet, not a theoretical future balance sheet.

What part doesn't make sense precisely?

A) The bank has $1m in deposits

B) It has to meet the reserve requirement (10%) for the deposits in its balance sheet ($1m)

C) The reserve requirement is $100k

D) The rest are excess reserves

The balance sheet looks like this:

    Assets                      Liabilities
    $100k Required reserves     $1m Deposits
    $900k Excess reserves

Sure, this is the balance sheet now:

    Assets                      Liabilities
    $100k Required reserves     $1m Deposits
    $900k Loans

That's the whole point of fractional reserve! You have enough reserves to cover a fraction of the deposits amount. If the bank has no excess reserves it will be in breach as soon as some depositor decides to get some of their money back and it will need to get more reserves to remain in compliance.

> The bank doesn’t need to wait for this unlikely event to happen to allow its reserves to drop to 10%, it can just make the extra loans in the first place.

The unlikely event that the people who take loans sends the money elsewhere? What would be unlikely is that they didn't.

Yes exactly, by making 9m loans, the bank has a fraction (10%) of reserves to cover the deposit amount (10m).

> The unlikely event that the people who take loans sends the money elsewhere? What would be unlikely is that they didn't.

You are assuming that 100% of deposits created by loans will be immediately withdrawn. The thing that doesn’t make sense is that you’re treating deposits created from debt as special. The bank needs reserves of 10% of all its deposits.

Why are you considering the eventuality that the loan holder buys something but not that the saver buys something? They are both equally irrelevant as they are eventualities factored into the 10% requirement.

Say there is only one current account holder at the bank with 1m savings. Then the bank gives that customer a 900k loan. Now the customer buys a house. Why do you assume the house will cost 900k? They might buy a 1.2m house, in which case the bank is stuffed, as it only has 1m reserves. There is nothing special about the 900k.

Because people take loans for something? It could be to invest, definitely not to keep it untouched in a current account.

Do you know of a single case of someone who took a loan for the sake of it, leaving the deposit created untouched at the lending bank, and paying interests for the privilege of having that deposit?

(The eventuality that the saver buys something is why banks keep reserves, with minimums set by regulators in some countries. To allow for a fraction of those depositors to buy something without the whole setup collapsing immediately.)

Edit: and for what it's worth, this "eventuality" is also seen as a basic scenario in the paper under discussion. That's what Figure 2 is about:

"The house buyer takes out a mortgage... ...and uses its new deposits to pay the house seller."

"The mortgage lender creates new deposits... ...which are transferred to the seller’s bank, along with reserves, which the buyer’s bank uses to settle the transaction. But settling all transactions in this way would be unsustainable: [...] the buyer’s bank will in practice seek to attract or retain new deposits (and reserves) [...] to accompany their new loans."

The whole premise of the paper seems to be that this way of thinking is backwards (in terms of the order and causality of events) and not really relevant to modern banking.

Another toy example - there are two banks in the banking system with 1m deposits and reserves, and they are let loose making loans at the same time. Why would they only create 900k of loans? The situation is symmetrical, they can expect the net reserve transfer between them to be small if they make similar amounts of loans. In what way is the 10% reserve requirement limiting them to making 900k of loans in this scenario?

As for the other question, it's clear from the beginning that things can be said about the banking system that are not necessarily true for any individual bank. That paper says as much "Figure 1 showed how, for the aggregate banking sector, loans are initially created with matching deposits. But that does not mean that any given individual bank can freely lend and create money without limit."

So long!

Ok, then this is NOT how it works -> "if a bank has $1 million in deposits the bank can make $10 million in loans"

I can agree with either of the following formulations:

"if a bank has $1 million in deposits the bank can make $10 million in loans as long as the loans remain as deposits in the bank"

"if a bank has $1 million in deposits the bank can make loans for any amount that it wants as long is it can comply with the reserve requirements"

Do, by all means, double check this. It's been quite a while since my studies so I had to work this out on the fly. I am generally more comfortable researching what I think I know then going over it again, and again, and again...... But I'm pretty sure that's right. It's in that deposits are liabilities and loans are assets things where, in working it through, I got that "oh!" moment.

It is an interesting thing, though. Because if you unwound all the deposits and all the loans in the economy, there would be no money in the money supply. All of it is dependent on loans and the money supply grows in response to the economy increasing. As the economy increases, there is a demand for more money. That demand results in more loans that results in an ever increasing supply of money.

It still weirds me out. But then, I do engineering, not money.

Very little will be kept in a matress or burnt. Almost all will go back to a bank.

$1m in Bank A

$1m in bank B

Charlie borrows $900k from Bank B, gives to Dave, puts into Bank A

Eric borrows $900k from Bank A, gives to Felicity, who puts it in bank B.

In your example, the money borrowed by Charlie from B does later go back to bank B.

But if you remove the last transaction it doesn't.

Hence, it doesn't necessarily happen.

Bank B $1m deposit

Total deposits: $1m

Fred borrows $900k from Bank B and gives to Geraldine who puts it in Bank A

Bank A $900k deposit with no loan

Bank B $1m deposit with 900k loan (90%)

Total deposits $1.9m (90% above initial deposits)

Henry borrows 800k from Bank A and gives to Iris who puts it into Bank A

Bank A $1.7m with 800k loans (loans at 60%)

Bank B $1m deposit (loans at 90%)

Total deposits $2.7m (170% above initial deposits)

And the cycle continues, doesn't matter how many banks.

It went from

  Bank B $1m deposit
  [$100k required reserves + $900k excess reserves] 

  Bank B $1m deposit with 900k loan (90%)
  [$100k required reserves + zero excess reserves]

To be clear, my original comment was: "The money created doesn’t necessarily go back to the bank. When you take a loan you use the money for something, not to keep it in an account at that bank. It will typically end in another bank."

The bank =/= A bank

One bank =/= The banking system

[Of course when another bank gets more reserves it increases their capacity to extend new loans. The question was whether a bank with $1m in deposits can lend $9m, not whether the whole banking system could.]

I don't think a bank without deposits would get very far issuing loans.

My understanding: The bank isn't required to hold 100% of the money you deposit in cash, though. It can lend it out up to certain limits. So if everyone tries to cash out all at once, shit will go sideways. But it's not because the money didn't exist before: the bank has a claim to a lot of assets to still attempt to balance it out in the case of collateralized loans.

If the bank wasn't there, we'd have to P2P all our lending. The bank just acts as a bigger, hopefully-more-efficient middleman, with a bunch of government regulation trying to balance out the risk/reward. If you, as an individual lender, chose the wrong person to lend to, your money would be at risk - similarly to if you choose a bank that massively fucks it up. But the deposit bank would have to fuck up way worse, under normal circumstances.

When a bank issues you a loan, it creates a deposit for exactly the same amount in your account. So what you said is true, almost by definition.

But many loans are issued by entities other than banks. You can lend profitably without being a bank. (google 'nonbank lenders')

If your loan customer wants cash, or wants to move some of that loaned money into another institution... whatcha gonna do?

Your nonbank credit card company would run into similar problems if they didn't have any income and simply were letting people buy products with magic printed money, but "credit cards create money out of thin air" doesn't get tossed around in the same way as it does for banks.

(Also, your claim about the deposit is entirely false for many loans. Every car loan I've had, for instance, has been either paper or electronic checks for delivery to the dealer, I've never had that money in my own deposit accounts. It goes straight to a deposit account at (usually) another institution, where it would damn well be noticed if the lending bank couldn't actually make good on the funds.)

'Deposit-taking institution' is pretty much the original definition of a bank (see 'Banking Act 1979'). But, putting that aside...

"If your loan customer wants cash, or wants to move some of that loaned money into another institution... whatcha gonna do?"

The same thing you do every night: borrow money overnight in the interbank market. If this becomes a regular thing, liquidate some assets.

"Your nonbank credit card company would run into similar problems if they didn't have any income and simply were letting people buy products with magic printed money"

When a nonbank lender grants a loan, it cannot create money in the same way that a bank can. It can't disburse the loan without having the money on hand already. By 'on hand', I mean 'in an account at a bank'. The source of that money could be:

- (equity) investors

- interest earned from other loans

- wholesale funding (money borrowed from other lenders)

- proceeds from selling loans to other parties (directly or via securitization)

You don't have any assets in the scenario we're talking about. Nobody is going to lend you money, because you're not a bank, you're a sham scheme trying to start up a magic money-printer.

You can't disburse another institution or to cash without having some assets somewhere to back all of this up. Your balance sheet, ultimately, has to make sense. Your supposed bank here couldn't loan me money to buy a car, because the dealer isn't going to be happy with numbers on a ledger in my account at this bank, they want something harder.

I'm not aware of any country that will allow you to start a bank without any assets.

I'm sorry, I don't think any explanation I give will satisfy you, so I won't comment further.

Really? That's what banks do now.

Likewise if you have 20,000€ on hand, or can borrow it from somewhere, you can use it to buy a car. You can then keep a mental note that you 'owe yourself' this money, but doing so makes no real difference.

“They face the risk” seems a huge understatement. It would be quite unusual for someone to take a loan from a bank and leave the money sitting there at the bank.

An imperfect analogy is if you buy a car for 20,000€ using a credit card. You haven't paid any real money, but now you have a liability that the credit card company will eventually claim.

Only the ECB and national central banks can create € notes (by which I mean central bank cash money).

Nothing is stopping you from creating your own notes denominated in €, but these would be obligations (IOUs) issued by andrepd. Just like bank deposits, these notes are private money, not central bank money.

It might be tough for you to find a car dealer willing to accept these andrepd € notes, though.

"The bank creates zero-cost virtual cash"

Making loans changes banks' reserve requirements, so they're not zero-cost.

> Making loans changes banks' reserve requirements, so they're not zero-cost.

Okay! So give me similar requirements! Asset/liability ratios, reserve requirements, cash flow requirements, the works, to determine given my finances how much liabilities I can create.

I disagree that it is intrinsically wrong that some people can do something that you cannot do.

If your neighbor lent you a hundred bucks and you loan ninety bucks of it to a different neighbor, you've done the same sort of thing. Of course, if you do it at a small scale, you're at high risk of having empty pockets if that neighbor wants their hundred back at an unexpected time. But do it to a thousand neighbors on either side of the exchange, and you can probably get away with re-lending most of it for a long time.

They aren't granted special money-making abilities; more the reverse: they are under regulations to prevent this power - which is, in happy times, very good for the economy - from being abused. We can argue about if those regulations are strong enough or not, but I think the "money is bullshit cause banks print it out of thin air" arguments are intentionally misleading from opponents of a system that otherwise isn't actually terribly complicated.

The extra money created is effectively money someone doesn’t need right now (deposit) that can be temporarily used, and returned eventually, by someone else. When it works, it works very well, but when it doesn’t, banks go bankrupt and someone generally loses money (deposits are insured but then the insurance scheme loses).

It’s not a bad thing overall, our capitalist world would be impossible without it, but this money creation craziness is a necessary component.

Eehhhhhhh........ Sounds like that isn't working out so well is it? x) With the only difference of course that if _I_ fail my obligations I don't get a taxpayer-funded bailout financed by cuts to people's salaries and pensions, instead my house gets reposessed and I go live with my kids to a homeless shelter.

But anyways. So give me similar rules: asset/liability ratios, cash flow minimums, the works!, to determine how much I can create by this mechanism.

> The extra money created is effectively money someone doesn’t need right now (deposit) that can be temporarily used, and returned eventually, by someone else.

That's not true in fractional reserve banking, and we're actually well last that, we're into no-reserve banking now.

Over the past 88 years, not a single penny of FDIC-insured money has ever been lost in a bank collapse... And when a bank collapses, non-FDIC-insured money also finds a way to not evaporate. The biggest bank bust in history - Washington Mutual, with $300 billion under management collapsed in 2008. Not a penny of its depositor funds, insured or not, were lost.

Meanwhile, in the three years prior to the establishment of the FDIC, over 9000 banks collapsed, collectively losing $140 billion dollars of depositor money.

One of the most important jobs of the federal government is maintaining confidence in the banking sector, because without it, we'd all be living in a Mad Max hellscape, trading bottlecaps for ammunition.

(And if starting a bank was a magic money-printing machine, no bank could ever need bailing out! They could bail themselves out! By definition!)

And can you go into more of why you don't think that applies to fractional or no-reserve banking? If I'm required to hold all my deposits in cash, I'd have to fund my loans through a different mechanism. Isn't lower reserve requirements precisely the means through which "money someone doesn't need right now" can be "temporarily used, and returned eventually, by someone else"?

> That's not true in fractional reserve banking, and we're actually well last that, we're into no-reserve banking now.

How so? In Europe at least, banks lend from their own loans (a mix of deposits, bonds and commercial papers), plus need capital at a fraction of assets (ie loans made).

Some banks in the UK can issue their own banknotes, but these must be backed up in cash with the BoE. And it’s awkward dealing with millions in used fivers. Hence the 100 million notes and friends.

You’d think other solutions exist in the 21st century but :shrug: