EuroBillTracker

Last updated

EuroBillTracker
EBT Logo.svg
Available inEnglish, and others
URL eurobilltracker.com
CommercialNo
Launched2002;21 years ago (2002)
Current statusOnline

EuroBillTracker (EBT) is a website designed for tracking euro banknotes. It was inspired by the US currency bill tracking website Where's George? [1] [2] The aim is to record as many notes as possible to know details about their distribution and movements, follow it up, like where a note has been seen in particular, and generate statistics and rankings, for example, in which countries there are more tickets. [3] EuroBillTracker has registered over 220 million notes as of September 2023, [4] worth more than €4 billion. [4]

Contents

Characteristics

EuroBillTracker is an international non-profit volunteer team dedicated to tracking euro notes around the world. The site is made up of people who simply enter the information from the notes in their possession. Each user enters the serial numbers and location information for each note they obtain into EuroBillTracker. A user can then see any comments from other people who have had that note. From this information, the site extracts:

Euro banknotes and coins were put into circulation on 1 January 2002 and EBT has been tracking notes since then. The site was initially created by Philippe Girolami (giro). Anssi Johansson (avij) has been assisting with running the site since mid-2003. Site translation and various other tasks are handled by a group of active EBT users.

EuroBillTracker is not affiliated with the European Union, European Central Bank, national central banks or other financial institutions. Using EBT is completely free. Unlike Where's George?, EuroBillTracker requires users to register an account before they can enter details of banknotes. [5]

From February 2008 onwards, the website is supposed to be run by a non-profit organization based in France, and called the European Society for EuroBillTrackers or Association des Eurobilltrackers. [6] This organisation, operating generally similar to the Wikimedia Foundation, will be in charge of protecting the EuroBillTracker database and ensuring it is free of charge. Proceedings for the founding of the association are under way as of January 2008; they were launched after disagreements between the founder of the website and other webmasters caused a split of EuroBillTracker into two different sites on 24 December 2007. The two sites reunited in early 2008.

Statistical facts

A map of Eurozone countries according to their EBT hit ratio, i.e. the ratio between the number of banknotes registered at least two times and the total number of banknotes entered in a country. Green represents a higher ratio. Eurozone EBT hit ratio.jpg
A map of Eurozone countries according to their EBT hit ratio, i.e. the ratio between the number of banknotes registered at least two times and the total number of banknotes entered in a country. Green represents a higher ratio.

Core figures

As of 1 January 2023: [7]

Entered notes (over)
Countryin 2015in 2016in 2017
Flag of Andorra.svg Andorra 27,40028,20028,500
Flag of Austria.svg Austria 13,900,00014,120,00015,330,000
Flag of Belgium (civil).svg Belgium 20,190,00020,470,00021,850,000
Flag of Croatia.svg Croatia
Flag of Cyprus.svg Cyprus 54,40054,60055,800
Flag of Estonia.svg Estonia 685,000710,000871,000
Flag of Finland.svg Finland 20,102,00020,290,00021,150,000
Flag of France.svg France 7,200,0007,370,0007,840,000
Flag of Germany.svg Germany 49,600,00050,450,00053,760,000
Flag of Greece.svg Greece 1,030,0001,050,0001,120,000
Flag of Ireland.svg Ireland 1,230,0001,260,0001,390,000
Flag of Italy.svg Italy 8,200,0008,360,0009,220,000
Flag of Latvia.svg Latvia 143,000150,000189,000
Flag of Lithuania.svg Lithuania 164,000190,000351,000
Flag of Luxembourg.svg Luxembourg 196,000199,000198,000
Flag of Malta.svg Malta 1,060,0001,080,0001,140,000
Flag of Monaco.svg Monaco 139,000140,000147,000
Flag of Montenegro.svg Montenegro 16,20016,40017,300
Flag of the Netherlands.svg Netherlands 18,100,00018,310,00019,040,000
Flag of Portugal.svg Portugal 7,100,0007,260,0007,670,000
Flag of San Marino.svg San Marino 4,9005,0005,200
Flag of Slovakia.svg Slovakia 1,170,0001,190,0001,310,000
Flag of Slovenia.svg Slovenia 3,900,0003,980,0004,220,000
Flag of Spain.svg Spain 5,300,0005,420,0005,760,000
Flag of Vatican City State - 2023 version.svg Vatican City 5,6005,7005,800

Number of banknotes entered (history)

YearNumber of Banknotes Entered
2002
531,072
2003
1,016,350
2004
3,320,821
2005
7,374,560
2006
10,843,152
2007
13,703,089
2008
14,820,569
2009
16,184,977
2010
15,163,651
2011
14,703,449
2012
14,217,909
2013
13,658,971
2014
13,008,377
2015
12,462,982
2016
11,769,011
2017
10,410,226
2018
9,583,954
2019
9,096,204
2020
7,531,961
2021
7,775,115
2022
8,026,847

Community

The growing popularity of EuroBillTracker has led to the development of a community of trackers, especially in countries with a higher usage of the website, such as Finland, the Benelux countries and Slovenia. On the contrary, the percentage of users with respect to the national population is especially low in some south European countries such as France, Spain or Greece, and also in Republic of Ireland

Since 2004, the community has been organising a pan-European yearly meeting during summer. After the 2008 meeting in Ljubljana, the EBT users also decided to organise a winter pan-European meeting.

YearWinterSummer
2004 Flag of Belgium (civil).svg Brussels
2005 Flag of Finland.svg Helsinki
2006 Flag of the Netherlands.svg Amsterdam
2007 Flag of Germany.svg Berlin
2008 Flag of Slovenia.svg Ljubljana
2009 Flag of Italy.svg Bologna and Ferrara Flag of Austria.svg Vienna
2010 Flag of Malta.svg Malta Flag of Italy.svg Florence and Prato
2011 Flag of Germany.svg Kalkar Flag of Spain.svg Barcelona
2012 Flag of Germany.svg Frankfurt am Main + ECB Flag of Germany.svg Munich
2013 Flag of France.svg Rouen Flag of the Netherlands.svg Rotterdam
2014 Flag of Portugal.svg Lisbon Flag of Finland.svg Turku
2015 Flag of Cyprus.svg Larnaca Flag of Belgium (civil).svg Brussels and Antwerp
2016 Flag of Ireland.svg Dublin Flag of Malta.svg Sliema
2017 Flag of Finland.svg Helsinki
2018 Flag of Spain.svg Murcia Flag of Lithuania.svg Vilnius
2019 Flag of Germany.svg Munich Flag of France.svg Lille
2020 Flag of Luxembourg.svg Luxembourg

Curiosities:

Apart from the yearly meeting, national communities have been organising local gatherings at various levels; most notably, the German-speaking community was once hosted at the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt am Main in April 2007. The visit was repeated in April 2012, during an international meeting.

Notes

^ There was no Winter Meeting in 2017 because the only host that applied to organize the event did it outside of the deadline date.

See also

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References

  1. Euro Bill Tracker Reaches 50,000 Registered Bills in 15 Weeks Time, press release published on April 12, 2002
  2. Saranow, J: "Follow the Money", The Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2002
  3. "EuroBillTracker – About this site". Philippe Girolami, Anssi Johansson, Marko Schilde. EuroBillTracker. 1 January 2002. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
  4. 1 2 "EuroBillTracker – Statistics". Philippe Girolami, Anssi Johansson, Marko Schilde. EuroBillTracker. 1 January 2002. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
  5. "EuroBillTracker :: View topic – how to enter notes?". Eurobilltrackerforum.com. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
  6. "EuroBillTracker :: View topic – Gennevilliers Agreement". Eurobilltrackerforum.com. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
  7. "Follow your Euro notes in their tracks". En.eurobilltracker.com. 1 January 2023. Retrieved 1 January 2023.