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Hot on the paper trail
Online money tracking attracts cult-like following
Silas Polkinghorne
The StarPhoenix
CREDIT: Gord Waldner, The StarPhoenix
'It's an addiction', says Greg Kitz of his money tracking
passion
On most mornings since April 2001, Greg Kitz comes home after a
night shift and spends about an hour online while his wife gets
ready for her day.
But rather than checking the latest stock prices or typing e-mails
to friends, Kitz uses his time on the internet to track the movement
of what today amounts to about $80,000 worth of paper money.
"It's an addiction," said Kitz, the senior brewer at Great Western
Brewery, in a recent interview.
He's part of a steadily growing group of people who mark each paper
bill they use with an ink stamp and then follow its travels around
the country.
In Saskatoon, the pastime has gained a cult-like following unlike
that in any other centre in Canada.
Money tracking seems an odd sort of voyeurism: one can only imagine
the people and places our money visits as it criss-crosses Canada.
The user comments describing one bill entered at Canadian Money
Track (CMT), Web site launched in 1999, reads "a person brought into
custody at a correctional facility had it on his person."
The stamped bills direct the recipient to access the Web site and
enter the bill's serial number as well as the location it was found.
"When you first look at it, it looks like a silly proposition," said
Kitz, who goes by the name Pooga on the site.
Some users log in once and breeze by, but many are quickly hooked,
he said.
"There's not much middle ground," Kitz added.
The power, he explained, is in the numbers. On the site, users
access statistics on which bills travel the farthest and fastest,
and which are entered on the site most often. Many keep their own
intricate stats, too.
"The statistics are what drives me," said Kitz. "I always loved the
numbers. I'm a closet statistician."
Kitz' favourite bills include one that travelled from Calgary to
Ottawa to Charlottetown in 25 days. Another showed up in Toronto
just eight days after being entered in Saskatoon.
Another CMT five dollar bill made a slow and steady trip all the way
from Vancouver to St. John's in 308 days.
Users also get excited about "sleepers," which occur when bills
don't show up on the site for a long time. A $20 bill turned up in
Shaunavon, Sask. 1,189 days after it was found in Prince George, B.C.
Another bill had six hits on the Web site in just 11 days.
Money tracking also shows that it is truly a small world. The
brother of founder Douglas Robertson entered a bill in Prince
George, B.C. which ended up in the hands of a friend of Robertson to
whom he hadn't spoken in years.
More stamped money in circulation means more people find them and
are drawn in. So money tracking has grown exponentially, especially
in Saskatchewan, since Kitz started stamping two years ago.
Saskatchewan is home to about one-tenth of CMT's almost 9,000
registered users as well as one-tenth of the 500 to 700 regular
users.
CMT keeps track of top users with a points system based on how many
bills entered, how many "hits" there are on those bills, and how
active the user is on the site. Saskatchewan consistently has about
the top six users in Canada.
Of the 220,000 bills which have been entered on CMT in Canada,
130,000 were entered in Saskatchewan and 79,000 can be traced back
to Saskatoon.
That's largely due to users like Kitz, who pays for almost
everything with cash and uses a lot of five dollar bills.
Ben Juker, a.k.a. Idjit, an assistant manager at two Saskatoon
Co-ops, said he's fascinated by the diverse uses people have for
money, from buying marijuana to giving it as a birthday present.
"My use for money is pretty mundane," he said. "I use it to pay
bills and buy groceries."
According to a Bank of Canada letter posted on CMT, marking bills is
not against the law and marked bills remain legal tender. However,
the Bank of Canada "strongly objects to any mutilation or defacement
of bank notes" because it limits their life and defaces a symbol of
national pride.
Robertson, a Calgary computer programmer, launched and maintains the
site at a cost of around $2,000 per year for Web server space. He
spends between 10 and 20 hours a week updating the site and said he
wants the site to remain a non-commercial venture.
"I just want it to be fun," said Robertson, whose online name is dr.
Kitz explained the site is more interested in "natural growth" than
attracting users through advertising or media exposure. But, "we'll
take anybody, actually," he added.
Since early 2002, users in Saskatoon gather every two or three
months for a social outing. Their first provincial meeting was
Sunday at Last Mountain Lake.
Other Canadian money tracking Web sites include Where's Willy?, with
almost 950 registered users.
Around the world, people can track the euro and yen, as well as the
United States dollar.
CMT can be accessed at www.cdn-money.com.
© Copyright 2003
