Were someone to monkey around with the 1’s and 0’s on their cellphone to show a larger balance than they actually had, and then filter that balance through a network of other cell phone accounts under different names, the new fake money would get lost in the system. If this happened even just a few times, and became widely known, people would likely loose faith in the system and stop using it.

Tracking this new fake money was just an off-the-cuff way of trying to solve the problem, the same way bank robbers can be tracked down by Treasury numbers (or whatever it’s called) on the bills they stole, or identity thieves by their credit card purchases.

it’d probably be pretty hard to track it all.

And that’s bad how? I have a right to privacy…

If you could hack into a phone, put a bunch of “money” on it, and then transfer it to a network of phones all over the world, little bit here, little bit there, back and forth throughout the network, it’d probably be pretty hard to track it all.

Or, alternatively, just put a little bit on money on the phone when you need it, and hope it goes unnoticed.