send oneFIELD NOTES / 001 / THE ORIGIN STORY ·
They Stopped Making Pennies. I Started Collecting Them.
Office Space had the right denomination. I’m trying a different approach.
The United States stopped making pennies for circulation on November 12, 2025.
Existing pennies still count as money. They haven’t been outlawed, confiscated, or escorted out of your change jar. The Mint simply stopped producing new ones for everyday circulation.
Apparently, making very small amounts of money can be an expensive way to make money.
This should have discouraged me.
Instead, I bought SendOnePennyTo.me.
A questionable lesson from Office Space
If you’ve seen Office Space, you remember the plan: skim fractions of pennies from a huge number of transactions. Tiny amounts, multiplied enough times, become a very large amount.
You probably also remember that the plan did not go smoothly. A programming mistake made the balance balloon far faster than intended. Panic followed.
I took away two things.
One: small amounts add up.
Two: asking seems less stressful.
So this is my version: no accounting virus, no secret transfers, no printer required to die in a field.
Just a website asking whether you’d voluntarily send me one cent.
They took fractions of a penny without asking. I’m asking for the whole thing.
The math that should probably have stayed in my head
Eight billion people. One penny each.
That’s $80 million.
Before you get excited, that is multiplication. It is not a forecast, a business valuation, or evidence that I have a sensible plan for reaching everyone on Earth.
At a smaller scale, a thousand pennies is ten dollars. A million pennies is ten thousand dollars.
The arithmetic holds. My distribution strategy has some catching up to do.
There is, of course, a catch
Sending one cent online is surprisingly awkward.
Payment systems have minimums and fees. Some of them cost more than the entire amount I’m asking for.
I have somehow found a business model where the transaction fee is the largest stakeholder.
That means the literal penny option needs a payment method that actually supports it. If there’s an optional $1 contribution, it will say $1 before you pay. I’m not going to advertise a penny and sneak a dollar into the checkout.
What do you get?
The satisfaction of participating in a very small, very ridiculous internet experiment.
There’s no investment return. No charitable claim. No subscription. The money goes to me, Chris, the person who bought the domain and did the multiplication.
You can also keep your penny. That’s a perfectly reasonable response.
But if this made you laugh, send the link to someone who remembers Office Space.
The government stopped making pennies. Let’s see whether the internet can still make something out of one.
Send one penny. Or just pass the nonsense along.
Not affiliated with the U.S. Mint or the makers of Office Space.
Sources: U.S. Mint announcement, penny FAQs, Office Space plot reference.
Meet the penny jar ↗By Chris. All articles