Because it works... The level of counterfeit currency is readily measurable. Currency can be withdrawn and replaced. Individual stolen notes can be tracked. Counterfeiting of the dollar and the euro today is a relatively minor problem

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2502... https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/banknote https://www.cranecurrency.com/news-insights/85-decline-in-us...

You sound sarcastic but it's true. Unless you have government-level resources, you can't make a perfect $20 bill. They don't use paper--water would destroy it--they use a special fabric with a single supplier that only sells to the government. They don't print; they stamp. There are watermarks, security strips, and other features that can't easily be reproduced. Doing it right would be a massive investment, at the risk of being caught and losing everything.

Doesn't matter as long as the real money is not disappearing from my wallet

It's very very very very hard to forge money convincingly enough to fool central banks. It's basically impossible for anyone but nation-state actors, and the only known cases date back decades. Today, it's even harder, because even if central banks were unable to identify forgeries, duplicate serial numbers or ones that have never been issued would be detected very quickly.

Even making forgeries that can fool normal automated tests, like those done in an ATM, is incredibly hard. It's certainly possible, just way too expensive.

There are two important differences:

1) We have a legal system which (not perfectly) can reverse or fix issues which arise, with crypto money, it's just gone.

2) Someone who can produce fake colourful paper will typically only be able to produce a fairly small amount and not destabilize the whole currency. In the rare occurrences where someone found a significant hack in a crypto-currency, it's just done.

It's very hard to steal a lot of physical currency.. Even with the biggest bills, it becomes unmanageable. Digitally it obviously doesn't matter if your transferring 1 Bitcoin or 10K

Yes, you are getting it.