Fed Miscalculates: A Cube of $1M Is Actually $500K

The U.S. Federal Reserve recently published a visual aid showing a cube of $100 bills worth $1 million. The only problem? The real value is $500,000. That's a 100% markup — not exactly pocket change.

Here's the math:

• A standard strap of $100 bills contains 100 notes = $10,000.
• A cube with 10 straps per side (1,000 notes) weighs ~1 kg and is worth $100,000.
• To get a "million-dollar cube," you need 10 such layers, not 20 as incorrectly shown.

For developers and startups, this is a great reminder: even authoritative sources can botch basic arithmetic. Always double-check your data, especially when money or key metrics are involved.

METABYTE studio comment: A calculation error is a classic bug we catch during code reviews. Good thing in our projects the price of a mistake is a few hours of debugging, not half a million dollars.