Ok I guess i can see how you could be tracked by credstick but i think that is to realistic and nowhere is that level of detail mentioned in the rules.

Yes a credstick would come with a serial number and when the bank transfers money from an account onto a stick it would be like Bob transferred X amount of cash into this specific credstick. The bank would find out the serial number as a way to prevent fraud.

Then when bob slots it into the taxi cab the taxi's comp would also verify the credstick was real by checking its serial number and poof people would know the credstick bob transferred money into was just used to pay for a taxi... eventually....if they hacked their way into a bank system to find the info.

Would a Bank corp let the cops or other corps access those numbers? The whole servers are probably stuffed full of black ic.

So either thats to realistic and should be ignored since its not in the rules or a hacker would have a very hard time finding out that Bob is the one who put money onto that credstick.

doesn't matter who put the money into the stick. there's no ID attached to it. bob can put money into the credstick, and then get mugged by fred, who steals the credstick (along with several other people's credsticks) and fred then hands over to a drug dealer in exchange for some bliss, and the drug dealer uses the credstick to buy drugs from wherever his source is, etc.

the actual credstick itself has a value. the creds are not attached to any ID until it is transferred to an account of some sort. as such, while the bank can tell where the credstick is, and who the money on it has been transferred to, they *can't* tell you who had the credstick. there is no papertrail that says who had the credstick, how long they had it, or what they did with it, until the money is transferred to a regular account.

or at least, such is my interpretation.

Certified Credsticks

Function: Currency, similar to present-day bearer bond or cash bond. (pg. 259, pg 322)

This is my understanding of the RAW on this topic. The certified credstick is not cash. It is a cash bond or a bearer bond (259).

Like a bearer bond or cash bond, the credstick will still have an actual account in the bank. This account is separate and anonymous so that whoever has the credstick controls the money in that account.

From what I have read into the rules that mean there are only three possible ways to hack a certified credstick:

1) Hacking the certified credstick to make it seem as if there is more money on the stick.
- The downside is that this excess amount of money on the credstick is illusionary and will be entirely useless when the credstick is used to actually purchase anything. The bank would simply decline the transaction of that certified credstick for anything over the actual amount of yen on the stick.

2) Hacking the credstick and forging a duplicate credstick for the same account.
- Someone mentioned this could work in a Dead Zone or in a very fast exchange when someone is not verifying the credstick.
- However, not many paranoid people are likely to take a credstick that can't be verified, ruling out both the Dead Zone idea and the fast exchange situation.
- Also true however, it is entirely up to the GM if an NPC is just plain stupid.

3) Hack the bank.