Future euro banknote design proposals • Hacker News Board

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#111

Post by applfanboysbgon » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:01 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #103

tialaramex wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the Birds & Rivers theme because nobody is expecting a specific bird to meet some arbitrary ideal whereas if you put identifiable humans on a banknote people start to mistake their inevitable flaws for a desirable property. I feel this more strongly for statues, but it seems desirable for the Euro or any potential international currency too.

> if you put identifiable humans on a banknote people start to mistake their inevitable flaws for a desirable property Does the same logic extend all elevated positions? A person in a national portrait gallery, a person with a statue, a person with an olympic medal or a nobel prize, a person with a fancy title like president or queen? Or is there something specific about bank notes that makes them more problematic?

They literally said they consider statues more problematic.

> a person with a fancy title like president

"President" is not a fancy title. It is, in fact, a title specifically chosen to be boring and unglamorous.

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#112

Post by krick » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:02 AM UTC

tmtvl wrote: post #104

timpera wrote: post #45

I try to pay everything in cash as much as I can, so it's nice to see the banknotes get some love from the ECB (even though the absence of €1 and €2 banknotes still hurts…). I think it's a bit strange to feature people on these, plus it would be difficult to agree on who to feature between the 21 € states. The birds look cool! But it would have been nice to modernize the current architecture-based design rather than…

> absence of €1 and €2 banknotes The US style? I much prefer the Japanese style instead (where €5 would be a coin instead of a note). When our largest coin is too small to buy a drink at a vending machine we've got a problem. ATMs don't turn over €5 notes anyway, so their existence is painfully awkward.

Why, though? I'd much prefer not to carry any coins at all, ever since I gave up and stopped fighting the Big Brother (I applaud everyone who still does, but it just didn't seem like my struggle was productive). I mean, to think of it, coins never were very nice to use, I just wasn't bothered by it, because the volume of cash on me was quite significant anyway. Now it's not and I just don't carry any coins at all. Paper is so much nicer to handle. I still need to have some cash just in case, but I'd simply "forgive" any change below 1€ now. I don't feel rich enough to forgive everything below 5€ though.

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#113

Post by ahartmetz » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:02 AM UTC

nottorp wrote: post #20

Are they going to switch to plastic while they're at it? That's the only thing I'll miss if Romania ever switches to Euro. Cash you can launder. Literally.

Paper cash is made from cotton fiber, it easily survives the washing machine.

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#114

Post by byroot » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:02 AM UTC

krick wrote: post #108

Hope it's the birds. I suppose there's no way to vote or anything with the current level of technological advancement, and the final design will be chosen by professional choosers that are handsomely paid for their hard work?

There's a public survey: https://surveys.ecb.europa.eu/10b/neweuro/

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#115

Post by binaryturtle » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:08 AM UTC

krick wrote: post #108

Hope it's the birds. I suppose there's no way to vote or anything with the current level of technological advancement, and the final design will be chosen by professional choosers that are handsomely paid for their hard work?

There's a survey link. Not sure it works as Cloudflare blocks me from accessing it. Oh the irony, having my opinion as EU citizen about an EU issue blocked by some silly US company.

I want some birds too!

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#116

Post by zokier » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:09 AM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #38

sunaookami wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birds aren't real.

That's exactly why they are a better choice, like the imaginary bridges on current Euro banknotes. The selection of people is also quite poor but that's because people are a poor choice: Most notable historical people are very linked to specific countries, often against other countries so picking neutral ones is hard. They also clearly decided to have an equal number of men and women, which makes it even harder. Obvi…

They could have done the same thing they did with the coins and make every country put their own faces in there.

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#117

Post by krick » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:10 AM UTC

sunaookami wrote: post #32

grim_io wrote: post #11

Birds are clearly superior.

Birds aren't real.

Aren't they? Pictures are quite small, but B50 is clearly a stork. B100 looks like some kind of heron maybe, not sure. B10 is a kingfisher, I suppose. I don't know, they look real enough to me.

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#118

Post by ahartmetz » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:11 AM UTC

holgerschurig wrote: post #26

vrganj wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Austrian, it feels a bit annoying that the Germans got their one famous composer - they're kind of our thing! Why not Mozart, Strauss, Haydn, Schubert? It's also unfortunate that the nice peaceful bird motif was paired with the ugly modern buildings on the other side.

At least you can be sure that Germans won't "adopt" them, e.g. you can often read "the german architect Hundertwasser" or "the german author Kafka" :-/ On the other side: most classic composers are from times when there was no Germany. E.g. J. S. Bach is from Sachsen-Eisenach :-)

Or Adolf Hitler, who was clearly Austrian! He kinda made up being German by himself, so it doesn't count.

(Edited "Germany" to German - "Germany" was an interesting typo and not entirely wrong: He said "One people, one empire, one leader!")

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#119

Post by dotcoma » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:18 AM UTC

The ones with EU buildings look like banknotes of the DDR.

Re: Future euro banknote design proposals

#120

Post by ahartmetz » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:27 AM UTC

zokier wrote: post #109

A) Front is nice, but I can't get over the shadow people in the backside B) The most boring of the options. The tiny text with the bird facts should not be there. C) Corporate hellscape. D) wtf are those hands doing here E) Again fronts look better than backs; fronts are very traditional bank-note to me. F) Most interesting option. Certainly feels different than any other bank note I recall. G) Ugh random vector shap…

I like the ones you find boring (but not the corporate Memphis ones) - money is a serious matter, so it's IMO supposed to look serious and a little boring.