The bank hater on your twenty

0:00You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on SpinQuest.com, the time flies by. That two-hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite spots. Live Black Check, live preps, with a live dealer. New players, $30 coin packs are on sale for $10. Play SpinQuest.com and you'll never be bored again. SpinQuest is a free to play social casino. Boydware prohibited. Visit SpinQuest.com for more details. If you imagine just reaching into your wallet or your pocket right now and pulling out a $20 bill. Yeah, the classic Andrew Jackson. Exactly. You are holding a piece of fabric that is literally engineered to outsmart computer software, survive a trip through a washing machine, and ironically celebrate a man who absolutely despised the very concept of paper money. It really is kind of a masterclass in how something so ubiquitous can be so completely misunderstood.

1:00I mean, we interact with it almost every single day. We just look at it and see purchasing power. Right, it's just lunch money. Yeah, but you are actually holding this highly contested miniature museum. And that is exactly our mission for today's deep dive. We're taking a single comprehensive look at the United States $20 bill. We're going to unpack the history, the economics, and the human contradictions woven directly into this everyday object. So, okay, let's unpack this. Let's do it. Before we even look at the faces printed on the front, we really got to talk about what this thing actually is. Because, well, the biggest misconception about paper money is right there in the name. It isn't paper. Right, what's fascinating here is the materiality. It is essentially a textile. The composition is actually 75% cotton and 25% linen. Wow. Yeah, and it weighs exactly one gram cut to precisely 156 by 66.3 millimeters. And when the Federal Reserve banks process these and ship them out into the economy,

2:02they bundle them together in very specific violet straps. Wait, I'm stuck on something right out of the gate here. If they needed to print money, why use cotton linen? I mean, those are materials you use to make a dress shirt or like a pair of jeans, right? Not a financial document. It's a great question. Why not use a thick parchment or something more traditional? Was it just, you know, what they had lying around? No, not at all. It comes down to the brutal physical reality of how money actually moves. You have to think about the velocity of currency in a modern economy. The 20 is basically the absolute workhorse of the American financial system. It is constantly moving from sweaty hands to cash registers. It's being folded up into wallets, shoved into ATMs, crumpled up, and you know, occasionally washed by accident. Left in the pocket of those jeans we just talked about. Exactly. Which means, I guess, standard wood pole paper would just disintegrate in a matter of weeks. Precisely. Yeah. Wood fibers break down incredibly quickly under friction and moisture. But a cotton linen blend gives the bill structural integrity.

3:04The fibers flex rather than snap when you fold them. Oh, that makes sense. But even with that highly durable fabric, the average lifespan of a $20 note in circulation is still incredibly short. Really? How short? It only lasts about 7.8 years before it is just so degraded by wear and tear that it has to be pulled from circulation and destroyed. 7.8 years, just for a single gram of cotton to travel around the country. Yeah. It really is less like a piece of stationary and more like a very thin, highly circulated pair of jeans. It's tough little survivor. But, you know, the physical durability is just the prologue to the real drama here. Oh, absolutely. Because the physical bill may only live for about eight years. But the face on the front of it has been locked in place since 1928. And it belongs to Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States. Yeah. And here's where it gets really interesting. It has to be the most contradictory design choice in the history of American governance. It is a profound historical irony.

4:05I mean, Jackson vehemently hated the very concept of paper money. Okay, wait, break the mechanics of that down for me. Why did he hate it? And what did he actually do about it during his presidency? Well, Jackson believed that gold and silver coin species, as it was called, was the only legitimate, reliable form of money. He deeply distrusted banks that issued paper notes. Just on principle. On principle and from personal experience. And he especially hated the central bank of his era, which is the second bank of the United States. So during his presidency, the president of that national bank, a guy named Nicholas Biddle, requested a renewal of the bank's charter. And he did this in an election year, effectively daring Jackson to intervene. Oh, wow. And Jackson did not back down, I assume. Not even a little bit. He took it as a personal insult. Jackson responded by making it, say, administration's primary goal to completely destroy the national bank. Just scorch the ears. Literally.

5:05He pulled federal funds out of it, essentially breaking Biddle and dismantling the central banking system altogether. But destroying the central bank didn't just make a political point, right? I mean, it had massive real world economic mechanics behind it. Huge consequences. Because when you remove the central bank, you remove the oversight on local and state banks. Oh, I see where this is going. Yeah, those smaller banks started printing their own paper money recklessly and lending it out, which fueled this massive real estate speculation bubble in the mid 1830s. And bubbles always pop. Always. When that bubble eventually collapsed, it triggered the panic of 1837. So his war on paper money directly contributed to a deep economic depression? It did. And you know, the historical context of Jackson's era makes this even darker. How so? Well, during Jackson's time as a merchant and a land speculator on the Southwestern Frontier, reliable money was incredibly scarce. Barter was just the norm. And the reality of that barter economy was frankly horrifying.

6:08Because reading the sources, merchants and speculators in that era frequently dealt in enslaved people because they lacked a common coin. Yes. A horrific reality of that time. Enslaved human beings were treated as embodied wealth and used almost as a form of currency. They were considered the primary security and a major part of agricultural property in Jackson's world. Exactly. So let me just get this straight. You have a man whose economic environment was defined by barter and a horrific commodification of human beings. It he becomes president, which is a literal war against the central bank and triggers an economic depression because of his deep-seated hatred of paper money. That is the summary, yeah. I have to push you on this. Knowing all of that, why would the Treasury decide to make him the permanent face of the $20 bill in 1928? It's like putting a staunch, anti-technology crusader on the logo of a new smart phone. That is the ultimate question. And his presence was controversial from the moment the bills hit the streets. But the official stance from the Treasury has always been aggressively mundane.

7:11Monday, how? Well, when the press demanded answers, Treasury officials flatly denied any political motivation. In a New York Times article from June 1929, the Treasury stowally maintained that the men chosen for these notes were placed there simply because their faces were the most familiar to the majority of people. I'm sorry, familiarity. That feels like a massive cop out. Putting a staunch, anti-banking crusader on the logo of your currency, just because people recognize him. Many people felt the exact same way. And it is highly conspicuous that the 1928 redesign just happened to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Jackson's election as president. Ah, there it is. But if you look at modern inquiries by the U.S. Treasury into their own archives, their records simply don't reveal any specific rationale. There is no smoking gun memo that says, let's put the bankator on the bank note to celebrate his centennial. It is just this enduring physical piece of irony. But knowing that Jackson only arrived on the bill in 1928 makes me wonder what this fabric looked like before him.

8:16Because prior to 1928, the currency wasn't just a static portrait. It was basically a completely different country. Oh, absolutely. And if we connect this to the bigger picture, early American currency wasn't just a medium of exchange. It was a vital canvas for nation building. Nation building through cash. Exactly. The government was trying to project American identity, shared history, and modern values to a rapidly growing diverse population that was just spreading out across this massive continent. And the artwork they chose to project that identity was incredibly varied. Like in 1861, you had a demand note featuring the goddess of liberty holding a sword and shield. Yeah. And then in 1865, a national bank note featured an engraving of the Battle of Lexington. And amazingly, Pocahontas' marriage to John Rolf. Just wild. You also see a parade of actual historical figures before the denominations became standardized. Alexander Hamilton was on the $20 bill in 1869 and again in 1880. James Garfield appeared in 1882. George Washington was actually on a gold certificate 20 in 1905.

9:19Right. But my favorite design, by far, is from 1914. It's a Federal Reserve note with Grover Cleveland on the front. But the back is what's really amazing. There's no White House. Instead, it features an engraving of a steam locomotive, an automobile, and a steamship. Which tells you exactly what the government wanted the public to value at that moment. Progress. Yes. Those large-sized notes were communicating the rapid technological progress and industrialization of the country. They were literally putting the engines of the economy on the currency to build public confidence in the money itself. You weren't just holding a dollar amount. You were basically holding the future. Exactly. But then, 1928 rules around. The treasury shrinks the physical dimensions of the bill to the small size we used today. The slap Andrew Jackson on the front, put the White House on the back, and the face of the bill basically locks into place for the next century. The face locked. Yes. But the physical object had to constantly evolve.

10:19The history of the $20 bill after 1928 is really the history of the United States reacting to external threats. First from global wars and eventually from modern technology. Oh, I want to look at a specific wartime threat. This is fascinating. Jump to 1942. Okay. The US is deeply entrenched in World War II, and the treasury issues a special emergency series of the 20 for the Hawaiian Islands. They call it the Hawaii overprint. Yeah, the visual changes on that one were stark. They printed the word Hawaii in bold letters across both the front and the back of the bill, and they used brown ink for the serial numbers instead of the standard green. Walk me through the mechanism of that. Why go through the trouble of printing a geographically specific bill in the middle of a war? It was essentially an economic kill switch. The US military had a genuine, terrifying concern that the Japanese military might successfully invade Hawaii and seize the massive physical cash reserves held on the islands. Right. We should be disastrous.

11:19Huge problems. Ensuring that every single bill in Hawaii had the specific brown serial number and overprint, the US government created a physical safeguard. If the islands fell, Washington could instantly declare any bill with the Hawaii overprint to be completely worthless. Effectively rendering the seized currency useless for funding the enemy's war effort. Or precisely. That is brilliant. It's like physical DRM for money. It really is. After the war, though, the changes to the bill get a lot more subtle. But they feel, I don't know, surprisingly poetic. Like in 1948, the engravers updated the White House on the back of the bill. They added the Truman balcony, which had just been constructed. But they also did something else. They actually drew the trees around the White House to be noticeably larger. It's a beautiful touch. It really demonstrates that money, despite being this cold instrument of commerce, is treated by its creators as a living document. It reflects the literal passage of time. And that concept of a living document really crystallizes in 1963.

12:22Two massive conceptual shifts happen to the 20 at the exact same time. The legal tender designation changes completely. The currency is taken off the silver backing. Yeah. You can no longer walk into the treasury and redeem your paper for lawful physical silver money. Right. It becomes pure fiat currency. Suddenly, in that exact same year, the motto in God we trust is added above the White House. Two fundamental changes to the philosophical nature of American money just implemented in a single redesign. Yeah. But as we move out of the mid-century and into the modern era, the changes stop being about aesthetics or balconies or mottos. The bill enters a high stakes arms race against counter-fitting. Oh, totally. The treasury essentially has to treat the $20 bill like a software program. Every time consumer technology gets better, the bill requires a new security patch to fight off hackers. Or, well, in this case, counterfeiters. Okay. I need you to break down exactly how these modern security patches work. Because we always hear terms like color shifting ink or micro printing.

13:22But how does ink actually shift color? It relies on optical physics. The ink used for the number 20 in the bottom right corner of the modern bill contains microscopic metallic flakes. Okay. When you hold the bill flat, light hits those flakes one way and looks copper. But when you tilt the bill, the angle of the light changes and the reflected color physically shifts from copper to green. Wow. Yeah. And you cannot replicate that effect with a standard color inkjet printer. They also embedded a vertical plastic strip inside the fabric. If you shine an ultraviolet blacklight on it, that strip closes bright green and reveals the text USA20. And then there is the feature added in 2003, which just sounds like something out of a spine novel, the Eurene Constellation. If you look closely at the back of a modern 20, there are dozens of tiny faint yellow number 20s scattered around the background. It just looks like a stylistic shading choice. But it is actually a digital trap. Modern imaging software inside your home scanner or a commercial photocopier

14:24is specifically programmed to recognize the spatial relationship, the exact geometric distances between those tiny yellow dots. Wait, so the machine is actively looking for it? Exactly. The moment the software detects that constellation pattern, it instantly shuts down the scan. The machine will either freeze or just print a completely blank page. The software simply refuses to process the image. That is wild. So we have this highly engineered piece of fabric fighting a silent war against consumer electronics. Yeah. But despite all of these invisible technological updates, the most heavily debated feature of the $20 bill today isn't the glowing strip or the optical ink. It's the one thing we actually look at, the portrait. Which brings us to the modern redesign tug of war. And this raises an important question. How does a modern democracy decide whose face belongs on its currency, especially when the physical money itself requires a decade of complex engineering to produce? It is a massive collision of public sentiment, political theater, and slow moving cold bureaucracy.

15:27Let's trace exactly how this played out, because it's a roller coaster. It really is. It begins with a grassroots campaign called Women on 20s. The explicit goal was to have a female portrait on the $20 bill by the year 2020 to mark the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Right, and they ran a massive public poll surveying over 600,000 people. The candidates were monumental figures in American history, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, and Wilma Mankiller, who was the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation. But the winner, pulling it over 118,000 votes, was Harriet Tubman. Yeah, the public spoke. But then pop culture through a massive wrench into the machinery, because the Treasury Secretary at the time, Jack Liu, had actually been planning to put a woman's portrait on the $10 note, replacing Alexander Hamilton. Right, but the timing collided perfectly with Broadway. Yeah. 2015 was the exact moment the musical Hamilton became a cultural juggernaut.

16:27It was everywhere. Alexander Hamilton's popularity surged, and fans of the musical actively campaigned to keep him on the currency. Yeah. So, Secretary Liu pivoted. He announced that Hamilton would stay on the $10, and Harriet Tubman would instead replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20. Think about that. A Broadway play literally altered the physical currency of the United States. Unbelievable. But there was a massive catch hiding in the bureaucracy. The $20 bill wasn't scheduled to be replaced until after the $10 bill. You can't just, you know, swap a JPEG on a printing press. A redesign means re-engineering that entire suite of security features we just talked about. Precisely. And this is where the politicians essentially wrote checks that the engineering department just couldn't cash. Oh, that's a good way to put it. The Obama administration announced the Tubman 20 with an implied target date of 2020. But when the political climate shifted, that timeline became a massive point of contention. Right. And let's look at the sequence of events strictly and partially here just following the timeline.

17:27Okay. During his campaign, Donald Trump called Harriet Tubman fantastic. But he opposed replacing Jackson on the $20, calling it pure political correctness. Then his Treasury Secretary, Stephen Manuchin, officially announced that the new design wouldn't be unveiled until 2026. Manuchin stated that the $20 couldn't jump ahead of the $10, or the $50, and the redesign queue, because of counter-fitting security concerns. Which naturally caused an immediate uproar. Democratic members of Congress pushed back hard, assuming the delay was purely partisan move to block the Tubman design. They demanded a formal investigation. But the resulting 2020 Inspector General Report revealed the mundane, grueling reality of anti-counter-fitting bureaucracy. Yeah. The report basically concluded that the timeline hadn't actually changed at all. The engineering team always expected the $20 to be production ready around 2030. So the earlier 2020 target date was... It was essentially a PR announcement made outside the normal note development governance structure.

18:30It never had the recommendation of the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence Steering Committee. Wow. So the political promise completely outpaced the actual security engineering. Exactly. And we saw this reality check happen again. When the Biden administration took office in 2021, the White House initially claimed they would accelerate the Tubman redesign. But by 2022, an internal message from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reaffirmed the 2030 debut. Exactly the timeline planned by the previous administration's security queue. Both sides of the political aisle ultimately crashed into the hard technical realities of printing secure money. It really completely reframes how I look at the money in my wallet. I mean, the next time you hand over a $20 bill to pay for a meal, just think about what you were actually holding. You weren't just holding purchasing power. No, not at all. You were trading exactly one gram of woven cotton and linen. You were carrying the deeply ironic face of a president who destroyed a central bank and triggered a depression because he hated paper money.

19:34Right. You are holding a document engineered with optical physics and secret constellations to outsmart computer software. And you are holding an object standing at the dead center of a modern cultural debate. And you know, that leaves me with one final, really fascinating thing to consider. Something that goes beyond the timeline of the redesign itself. What's that? Well, as we tap our phones to pay for groceries, as we use credit cards and digital wallets more and more every single day, we are rapidly moving toward a completely cashless society. That's a great point. The velocity of physical money is dropping. So will these intense multi-year debates about whose portrait deserves to be on our paper money eventually become a relic of the past? Will this incredible, complex 75% cotton object with all its rich ironies and controversies simply become a museum piece before the 2030 Harriet Tubman design even has a chance to wear out? Wow. Will the new 20 outlive the era of paper money itself?

20:34That is a fantastic question to ponder next time you reach into your pocket. Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the $20 bill. Stay insanely curious. Keep looking closely at the everyday objects around you and we will catch you on the next one. I'll come back up. At Amika Insurance, we know you'll always find ways to look out for the people you love. And with Amika Life Insurance, we'll help build a plan to make sure you always can. We're here to help protect the life you've built. Really? I don't know. Amika, empathy is our best policy. Visit amika.com and get a quote today. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on spin quests. And there's never been a better time to sign up then right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10 all the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash prizes. That's at spinquest.com.

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