Away with the past:

(Death to Pennies) The story of the penny starts in the first US Mint founded in 1792 which produced these one-cent pieces along with other coins including the Quarter, Dime, Half Dime and a mystery coin that we’ll get back to later.

These pennies of the new republic were born of 100% pure copper.

But, two forces conspired to ensure this wouldn’t remain the case for long. The value of copper went up and, because of inflation, the buying power of the penny went down.

This caused The Mint to reduce the amount of copper in pennies, first from 100% to 95%, and then to only 5% copper and 95% zinc.

Despite this debasement, in 2006 the value of the metal in older pennies rose over 1 cent and suddenly they were worth more dead than alive so people melted them to sell the raw copper for profit.

In a rational, efficient world, the story of the penny would have ended here with the Government realizing that they weren’t worth Minting and happy that its citizens were removing them from circulation.

But, instead the Government made melting U. S. coins illegal and continues to manufacture 4 million pennies each year.

Which is idiotic as it costs the US Mint about 1.8 cents to make a each 1 cent penny.

And, on with the future:

(Dwolla) New technologies are putting our lives, our communities, and our world at the tips of our fingers. At Dwolla, we’re using those same ideas to build a new payment experience inspired by cash, fueled by you.