The 12-sided British pound isn't here yet -- it'll be issued next year -- but it's already a member of the club: the international cool-money club.
We're talking currency from around the world that looks cool, feels cool and breaks ground with high-tech, anti-counterfeit features or other out-of-the-box thinking.
Produced by the Finnish company Denarium, the coin comes in a variety of looks (including brass and gold), can be loaded with a range of bitcoin amounts and features an awesome hologram that protects your all-important private key.
Australia knows how to do cash. In 2016, the land Down Under issued this polymer bill with two little raised dots, the better to help the vision-impaired identify the currency.
Published:Caption:Joal RyanPhoto:Handout/Australian government
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China's ATM-stumping baller note
This bill, dubbed "high-roller gold" for the gold-colored 100, has so many security ribbons, lines and other high-tech security features that ATMs in China had to be upgraded in order to recognize and process it.
This bill not only stands on its own but also has a magic maple leaf: If you look through the leaf via a single light source, a ring of text appears, verifying the note's value.
This rainbow of plastic cash, introduced in 1998 and still going strong, inspired a love letter by an Aussie columnist, who wrote of it in the Guardian: "It's optimistic money and it's durable...You can put it in your board shorts and take it surfing."
This concept is just cool: The Bristol Pound is local currency produced by and for its British-city namesake. Bristol merchants can choose whether to accept it or not.
The plastic banknotes from this series, introduced in 2015, are literally brighter and clearer than earlier versions. The $5 bill has been described as "stunning" by British press and was named "banknote of the year" by the International Bank Note Society.
In the works since 2014, this striking bit of currency is expected to delight consumers starting in March 2017. Per the Royal Mint, it's designed to vex counterfeiters with a mysterious, hidden high-tech security "feature."
This commemorative bill, issued in 1998, looked a little worse for the wear by the early 2000s, but it get points for being at the forefront of the polymer wave, and for featuring flourishes that are as decorative as they are security-minded, like a clear window in the shape of a lotus blossom.
Sure, the Brits waited until this year to adapt to plastic, but their just-issued bill, hailed as "cleaner," "safer" and "stronger," makes our list because they're the only ones who thought to demonstrate polymer's durability by sticking it in what appears to be a tray of potatoes.
Mexico began going the way of plastic cash in 2002. The new peso was hailed as being harder for copycats to clone, thanks to the clear-window feature in the lower corner, and as being more durable than paper.
