EuroBillTracker
 | |
| Available in | English, and others |
|---|---|
| Website |
www |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | 2002 |
| Current status | Online |
EuroBillTracker (EBT) is a website designed for tracking euro banknotes. It was inspired by the US currency 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 117 million notes as of May 2013,[4] worth more than €2.235 billion.[4]
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:
- Diffusion information: Each euro country has its own range of note serial numbers and from this information EBT can generate diffusion graphs that tell us how the notes travel to other countries. See the Diffusion section for more information.
- Tracking information: When a note is re-entered, the users who previously entered it are notified via email. These hits can be seen in the statistics section.
- Statistics and rankings: Who enters the most notes, which are the top countries? Where are the notes currently situated?
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 Belgium, and called the European Society for EuroBillTrackers.[6] This organisation, operating generally similar to Wikimedia, 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
Core figures
As of 19 October 2016:[7]
- Number of users: over 199,100
- Number of banknotes: over 160,000,000
- Total value of all notes: over €2,900,000,000
- Number of interesting hits: over 925,000
- Number of bills by country:
| Country | Notes entered (over) |
|---|---|
 Germany | 49,600,000 |
.svg.png){kind=small} Belgium | 20,190,000 |
 Cyprus | 54,400 |
 Vatican | 5,600 |
 Slovakia | 1,170,000 |
 Slovenia | 3,900,000 |
 Spain | 5,300,000 |
 Estonia | 685,000 |
 Finland | 20,102,000 |
 France | 7,200,000 |
 Greece | 1,030,000 |
 Ireland | 1,230,000 |
 Italy | 8,200,000 |
 Latvia | 143,000 |
 Lithuania | 164,000 |
 Luxembourg | 196,000 |
 Malta | 1,060,000 |
 Monaco | 139,000 |
 Netherlands | 18,100,000 |
 Portugal | 7,100,000 |
 San Marino | 5,000 |
 Austria | 13,900,000 |
 Andorra | 28,200 |
 Montenegro | 16,200 |
Number of banknotes entered (history)
| Year | Number of Banknotes Entered |
|---|---|
| 2002 | 531,080 |
| 2003 | 1,016,793 |
| 2004 | 3,322,883 |
| 2005 | 7,377,815 |
| 2006 | 10,856,023 |
| 2007 | 13,724,936 |
| 2008 | 14,864,731 |
| 2009 | 16,192,463 |
| 2010 | 15,170,832 |
| 2011 | 14,736,986 |
| 2012 | 14,248,117 |
| 2013 | 13,692,838 |
| 2014 | 13,036,882 |
| 2015 | 12,506,391 |
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 organizing a pan-European yearly meeting during summer. And after the 2008 meeting in Ljubljana the EBT users decided to organize also a winter pan-European meeting.
| Year | Winter | Summer |
|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Brussels | |
| 2005 | Helsinki | |
| 2006 | Amsterdam | |
| 2007 | Berlin | |
| 2008 | Ljubljana | |
| 2009 | Bologna | Vienna |
| 2010 | Malta | Florence |
| 2011 | Kalkar | Barcelona |
| 2012 | Frankfurt am Main | Munich |
| 2013 | Rouen | Rotterdam |
| 2014 | Lisbon | Turku |
| 2015 | Larnaca | Brussels |
| 2016 | Dublin |
The Summer meeting in 2016 will be hosted by Malta, being the second time a host place will be repeated.
Apart from the yearly meeting, national communities have been organizing local gatherings at various levels; most notably, the German-speaking community has once been 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.
See also
- Currency bill tracking
- Where's George? (tracks United States paper money)
- Where's Willy? (tracks Canadian paper money)
References
- ↑ Euro Bill Tracker Reaches 50,000 Registered Bills in 15 Weeks Time, press release published on April 12, 2002
- ↑ Saranow, J: "Follow the Money", The Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2002
- ↑ "EuroBillTracker – About this site". Philippe Girolami, Anssi Johansson, Marko Schilde. EuroBillTracker. 1 January 2002. Retrieved 21 October 2011.
- 1 2 "EuroBillTracker – Statistics". Philippe Girolami, Anssi Johansson, Marko Schilde. EuroBillTracker. 1 January 2002. Retrieved 1 May 2013.
- ↑ "EuroBillTracker :: View topic – how to enter notes?". Eurobilltrackerforum.com. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
- ↑ "EuroBillTracker :: View topic – Gennevilliers Agreement". Eurobilltrackerforum.com. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
- ↑ "Follow your Euro notes in their tracks". En.eurobilltracker.com. 1 January 2002. Retrieved 2016-10-19.
External links
-
EuroBillTracker WebSite (English) (other languages available on the site)