Penny, the mascotsend one
penny to meONE CENT. THAT IS THE WHOLE ASK.

AN EXTREMELY UNSERIOUS INTERNET EXPERIMENT

You have a penny.
I have a terrible
business plan.

What if everyone on Earth sent me one cent?
There’s only one very silly way to find out.

One time. Entirely optional. Absolutely no world-changing promises.
By PayPal, a penny is a penny. Card payments open soon. The total is shown before you pay.

Small change.
Questionable ambition.↙
Penny, a cartoon copper penny with arms and feet, smiling at the absurdity of it all
1¢THAT’S THE WHOLE ASK.

THE PENNY JAR

The jar is ajar. Pennies welcome.
LIVE / STARTING AT AN HONEST ZERO

$0.00

Collected so far, toward $80,000,000

0 payments · $80,000,000.00 to go
0.0000000000% of $80,000,000

Counts confirmed payments only. Fee covers are listed separately. See every entry ↗

Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders: your countries already scrapped the cent. Send America one back.

WHAT THE JAR CAN BUY

From one gumball
to everyone on Earth.

Ten rungs, tiny to absurd. The jar climbs them one penny at a time.

Typical US prices, checked October 2026 and rounded. Where it varies, it says about.

  1. A gumball from a quarter machine.Flavor not guaranteed.
    25¢
  2. A Forever stamp, first class.Up from 78 cents in July. Even stamps want more.
    82¢
  3. A cup of coffee, regular, hot.Drip. Not the oat milk thing.
    about $3.50
  4. A movie ticket.Popcorn is a separate fundraiser.
    about $11.50
  5. A tank of gas, 15 gallons of regular.At this month’s prices. Pennies do not go far.
    about $65
  6. An iPhone 17, the base one.Let’s be realistic.
    $799
  7. A new car, the average one.Sadly, not shaped like a penny.
    about $50,000
  8. The median US home.Half of them cost more. Nobody is surprised.
    about $429,000
  9. Thirty seconds of Super Bowl ad.Airtime only. Penny would star for free.
    about $8,000,000
  10. The goal. Everyone on Earth, one cent each.Still less than the Mint lost making pennies in 2024.
    $80,000,000

THE MATH IS GOOD. THE PLAN IS DEBATABLE.

Eight billion people.
One cent each.
Eighty million dollars.

Yes, that’s the math. No, that’s not a forecast.

I’m Chris. I bought a domain, did some multiplication, and decided the internet deserved a spectacularly small ask.

There is no product. No secret cause. No promise of returns. Just a voluntary contribution to me, and a public experiment in how far a penny can travel.

The honest fine print ↗
8,000,000,000 people×$0.01=$80,000,000*

*Hypothetical gross total using a rounded population of 8 billion (the real figure is about 8.2 billion, which only makes the plan worse). Before fees, refunds, taxes, and the obvious problem of reaching everyone. Full math ↗

FOR THE OVERACHIEVERS

Feeling a hundred
times more ridiculous?

You can choose to send $1, $10, or more. That’s 100 pennies, 1,000 pennies, or a lot of pennies from you.
It does not count as that many people. We can still do math.

FIELD NOTES

They stopped making pennies.
I started collecting them.

FIELD NOTES / 011Which Countries Got Rid of the Penny? What Happened NextCanada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and several euro countries dropped their smallest coins. How each one rounded cash, what happened to prices, and how the U.S. compares.Read it ↗FIELD NOTES / 010How Many Pennies in a Pound? Weighing the Penny JarA modern penny weighs 2.5 grams, so a pound is about 181 pennies, or $1.81. Older copper ones weigh more. What rolls, bags and a whole jar weigh and are worth.Read it ↗FIELD NOTES / 009Which Pennies Are Worth Money? The Short, Honest ListMost pennies are worth one cent. A few are worth thousands: 1943 copper, 1944 steel, the 1955 and 1969-S doubled dies, 1992 Close AM. How to check yours.Read it ↗

All articles ↗

THE PART THAT MAKES THIS INTERESTING

A penny is tiny.
The internet isn’t.

Send this to the friend who will say “this is stupid”
and then immediately ask for the link.

WANT CREDIT FOR THE SPREAD?

Get your own penny link.

Sign up with an email and you get a link that is yours. Every visit, signup and penny that comes through it is counted, in public, on the Spreaders page. We find out who has the biggest network, which is the actual experiment.

A few updates a year at most, one click to leave. Your email is never shown, sold or shared.

Fair questions.
Honest answers.

Does the money just go to Chris? (Yes.) Can you really send exactly one penny? (Almost.) What is the fee allowance? Is the counter real? What is a penny link?

Read the FAQ ↗

PICK YOUR LEVEL OF RIDICULOUS

How many pennies?

Counts as: 1 penny
By PayPal, a penny is a penny: send $0.01 to a friend from your PayPal balance or bank and the whole cent arrives, no fee inside the US. From outside the US, PayPal charges the sender 5 percent with a 99 cent minimum on a friend payment, so a penny costs you about a dollar on your side; the jar still gets the whole cent. Card payments open soon, at 50 cents, the card minimum.
By card: $0.50 · By PayPal: $0.01

Add a penny for your thoughts. Card checkout has a note box and PayPal has a message line. Up to 140 characters, read by a person first, then shown with your penny on the thoughts wall. No names.

One time. No account. The money goes to Chris, an individual. Terms