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I never realised until today, that the printed Euro was not fungible, eg the first letter of a Euro at least show which country it is for. This means Greece Euro can be devalued in a day to worthlessness.

It seems the Euro was set up to fail or at least with easily implemented mechanisms to carve out remember quickly.

I would be getting my "money" out of EURO or at least Greek Euros ASAP.

I don't think so as long as the issuing power of Euro is controlled by the ECB. So all of the banks in European are treating the same status for different Euro. So is the merchants! What is your intention of creating panic here?

They print a Y infront of the serial number of Greek Euros and X-in front of the serial number for german Euro's.

This is by design of the central bank.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/11691232/I-am-going-on-holiday-to-Greece-should-I-avoid-Greek-euros.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/11691232/I-am-going-on-holiday-to-Greece-should-I-avoid-Greek-euros.html)

I am not 'creating panic' just stating it as it is, and making a personal comment after that.

It is a free forum. You can talk anything in your mind as long as it is not spamming and insulting others. Probably you can create a poll to see how many of users here agree with you, or just your personal idea?

Given that's they way they print it and its confirmed as a mechanism to remove legitimacy....its not a vote or personal idea in relation that it's not fungible, the personal view was as too the removal of any money I had from there which is a personal view.

Yes, and all notes are equally valid across the continent. Y-notes aren't going to lose their value.

Also, new design notes (of which right now we have 5 and 10 euro, with the 20s coming in later this year) no longer have this country letter—they just duplicate the printing letter that appears at the front (very small, difficult to spot).

Nothing to worry about.. They can't risk having people from other countries lose money because of this.. Besides, in what shop will they check if a note is from greece?

The Greeks will be kicked out before it pulls down the Euro.

Time will tell how much influence the Greeks would have, but for now, people are withdrawing Billions of Euro's and hiding it under beds.

The extention of the Bailouts has never been so important for the Greek people, as it is now. Lessons are to be learned from this, and I hope people are sitting up and taking notice, they might be next.  >:(

I don't think you are creating panic, but I do think you are reading into it more than should be.
You can tell where a note was printed, yes. You can also tell when a coin/note was minted, but that doesn't mean that they will stop accepting all currency that is older than x years old.

If anything, it would be worth having Greek Euro, they might be collectors items one day!

i never liked how each euro nation has its own euro, it was supposed to be a global currency for every european countries, yeah i know that it does not matter, because they are issued from one entity only

but still it can confuse tourist

and greek euro is the same as other euro, is the ECB that print it, not each state separately

Indeed, euros differ from country to country, from first letter to various other small things. I think that even some graphics are different.

But it doesn't matter. If one would devalue "Greece Euro" to nil, it would hurt people from all over Europe. Because the money travels. Because they've got mixed with the local money in all Euro countries. Especially Greek Euro, with a country with such high amount of tourists.

Wow, I never knew this. I actually thought the Euro notes were the same across all the countries. But I guess it makes sense having different cultural icons for each country on their notes.

I would assume it's possible to spend one country's Euro note in another Euro country, correct?

i remember that when i was in france, i needed(actually my father did it, i was too young for such thing :D) to exchange my euro with the local euro

but i'm not so sure about this anymore, because it happened at the launch of the euro or shortly thereafter, maybe they changed the rule now

That sounds like a story that is not quite correct, the euro was the euro right from the start, there was no way shops would prevent you from using the bills. Are you sure it was euro? And not the Francs? Was it before or after 2000?

I think it is very nice to see the foreign euro's ending up in my wallet, it makes it more interesting to know a coin has travelled all over europe to end up as change in my pocket :)

Come on let's be serious there's no difference among different euro notes.
Let's not be silly.
We can agree on the fact that it is only "paper" but please... come on!
 ;)

No. He must have exchanged USD or DEM (German Mark) into Francs (FRF?). Euro was the same in France as in the rest of Euro zone since the start of Euro.

I'm not well versed in Euro's as it's not my main currency of use.
That said thanks for the tidbit of info there if you want a Euro make sure to check which marking it uses although as mentioned they both are valid units of currency.

(For fun it would be cool to have a bunch of Greek labelled Euros and then sell them for Bitcoin in the future if they lose their recognized value)
As a joke of sorts  

Notes not only travel: some years ago, a lot of 10s in Spain had the letter Y in them. They were printed in Greece, then taken to Spain and distributed in Spain. In fact, spanish 10s have been a rarity, even in Spain, since 2005 or so. This is called pooling and happens all over the place. Other examples of notes pooled to Spain are Dutch 5s and French 20s. Conversely, 50s are made mostly in Spain and pooled out to several countries.

All this about Y-notes losing value is bullshit.

Greek Euro is still Euro, it will be accepted in any country within the EU. Think of all the Greek Euro flowed out of Greece into neighbouring countries the past years, and the unrest if there money suddenly becomes worthless? ECB is not stupid enough to put Euro legal tender to test like that.


This is one opportunistic idea!

What do you mean the 2 versions of Yuan? I never know they are different! China has a huge amount of trading surplus and GDP is over Japan, become the second largest economy. The influence of Yuan is increasing a lot! How come Yuan is different!

i'm sure, my father at that time exchanged italian euro for france euro, it was for buying an icecream there

and it was definitely after 2000, around 2002

but i don't exactly remember why he did that, maybe it wasn't mandatory, and he did it only to be more confortable in paying with the exact same currency? i don't know sincerely

I've had Euros from all over Europe and never went to those countries, I know people who collect coins and notes from member states also without going there, plus notes and coins have one side personalized for each country, you don't need to check the serial number...

All paper money can essentially become worthless in a day not just the Euro. For me, it doesn't matter where it gets printed, a paper money is still a paper money and as long as there is no control or whatsoever Banks basically has all their say to dictate the terms and condition. Finally it all depends on us whether we want to buy into it.

that's it.
So there's no difference amongst euros... the only difference is what you can do with a different amount of euro in a certain state: somewhere is cheaper to live therefore your euros will be far more valuable.
But it is always the same currency.

That is pretty interesting and concerning in the same way.
What i am wondering is, what about the bank notes that were printed in Greece but are owning by a other European holder? Can this bank note could be exchanged to a none Greek printed bank note? It's hard to believe.

IMO anyone will bother to exchange Greek notes to none Greek notes as long as they hold the same value.

It is irrelevant where the note was printed!
Even if Greece leaves the Euro, the notes printed in Greece will have the same value in the rest of the Eurozone.

I just looked through the 10€ notes I have to hand.  I live in Germany and have 8 from Germany, 3 from Holland, 2 from Slovenia, 1 from France and 1 from Greece. I would assume that it would be similar elsewhere, so they move around too much to try to control them somehow.  The new 10€ notes are only a few months old too, so other notes like the 20€ should be even more spread out.

Euro's value will remain as same as the official currency of the eurozone, which consists of 19 of the 28 member states of the European Union. Unless they remove any states from their Union. So far Greece included in EU, so eventually it's currency also has same value as other EU preserves.

It was definitely not necessary. If he did it anyway, it was probably out of uncertainty or just for amusement.

Would you exchange your New York dollars into Texas Dollars or California Dollars if you were traveling within the U.S.? Just as one USD is the same within all U.S.A. states, an Euro is the same in all countries belonging to the eurozone.
Claiming otherwise is just spreading FUD. There are enough valid criticisms about fiat currencies and money policy of ECB and FED, you don't need to push clearly false statements about non-fungibility to make a point.

Onkel Paul

Good to know all this news. I didn't know that the euro wasn't fungible. I knew that there is produced euro which is with characteristics of every country. So every country will be represented in some (its) euros. Every euro will be known for which country is. And that this euro can be used the same in every country of EU. Have the same value and used equally like the every other euro of every other country in every country. But that this euro cannot be changed with the same euro from another country this is the first time that I hear. Thanks a lot. But I have a question. Even now when this news have no more to much importance (like two months ago) because Greece is in EU and are no risks (for the moment) to go out. If the Greece would go out, the Greek euro will not have more value? I don't think so but is someone who know for sure the answer?

Europe has a history of their cancelling currencies

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/17270

Thanks trollercoaster. But how much life has a euro banknote? When it is cancelled? And it will be this possible if one country go out of EU? So, all the notes of the country code of this country will be cancelled?

That really all depends, though now is a really bad time to be holding any Euros, maybe keep enough in Euros for immediate use and any money you plan on saving convert into USD.

Depends means that the answers of my questions are all yes and the deadlines are different from country to country? As for the euro you'right. I have my savings in us dollars from to many times. Even my country is in Europe and all the connections we have need euro and not us dollar. In other words, if I will need to use that savings, must convert those in euro absolutely and this mean loss from the change.

An Euro is an Euro in every single European country, because it isn't a free market, it's regulated so merchants don't have a say on how much a currency is valued, otherwise it would just be like having a national currency.. one of the points of being in an union is to have the same monetary value across said conglomerate of countries.

This is basically like USD and Eurodollars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodollar). CNY is domestic (i.e. mainland China), CNH is international (including Hong Kong and Macao SARs).

1 euro = 1 euro no matter what country minted it.

The only time where this is not true, is for collectors, as some people like to have a coin from every country, so they might pay a small premium for rare coins that are no longer in use (mostly 1 and 2 eurocent coins that are not even minted anymore in some countries).