There’s money hidden in Eindhoven. Whoever finds it first gets to keep it. The location is announced on Instagram, where you can see a video of someone hiding the banknote. That person remains anonymous.
You get to see banknotes of 5, 10, 20 and even 50 euros. Then you get to see a small section of the location. Those who recognise it can pick the money up for free. “Everyone likes money. Especially if it’s free,” says the creator of the videos.
“It is now becoming a trend on Instagram,” he says. He wants to remain anonymous so people can’t start making demands on where he should hide money, for example. “I don’t want people to pressuring me to put it somewhere. I want to do my own thing.”
Craze
“There are accounts all over the world. I saw the amounts getting higher and higher. I saw people in America hiding gold coins. In India they even hid diamonds. I thought let’s try it in Eindhoven and see how far it can grow, because nobody had started it here yet.”
The craze spilled over to Eindhoven from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Free money has been a success so far. “It’s already going pretty fast. I’ve been up for six days now. I already have four thousand followers. Some videos have already been viewed almost 50,000 times. It’s suddenly going very fast.”
Hard to find
The videos are on the Instagram account ‘free_money_ehv’. The hiding places are not that hard to find yet. The TU/e, the Philips Stadium, the Evoluon. “As the amount gets higher, I want to start making it harder and show less,” the creator says.
The money might be stuck to a road sign, for example. “Once it took an hour, but in the last videos I posted, it was collected within 10 minutes.”
Theseemingly generous donor gets the money from companies. “In return, I put their logo in the picture. It’s almost free advertising for them. I already had a Mexican restaurant and a bakery. They see opportunities in this. The baker gave two brownies in a box from the company and twenty euros. Then I hid the money in the box.”
Support
He himself earns some money from it too. Ten or twenty euros at a time. The anonymous benefactor is now 28 and works in healthcare. “I want to hide money every day. It depends on whether companies want to support me. It would be very nice if I could make a living from this. I don’t know if I can become that big. We have seen people in America giving away 10,000 euros. I hope to hit one thousand one day.”
To prevent anyone from thinking it is rigged, the account contains information about the finders. “People send a message with a picture that they found it. On the Instagram page you see the person who found it.”
Happy child
If two people find the money at the same time, they should just figure it out together, he thinks. “Whoever has it first, has it. The other day, a father responded saying his son was trying to find the money. That was about a tenner. Ten minutes later I got a picture of a happy child. That made my day.”
Source:Studio040
For Eindhoven news :Shanthi Ramani
