JohnDog

Robinhood put him on a savings bond in their own explainer, and nobody looked.

Put your John Dog on itHow to enlist
PATRIOT BONDSERIES AAFIFTY DOLLARSJOHN DOG321 WOOF STREETBARKLEY CITY01313167155EJAN 1 2000JAN 1 2030PATRIOT BONDSERIES AAFIFTY DOLLARSJOHN DOG321 WOOF STREETBARKLEY CITY01313167155EJAN 1 2000JAN 1 2030PATRIOT BONDSERIES AAFIFTY DOLLARSJOHN DOG321 WOOF STREETBARKLEY CITY01313167155EJAN 1 2000JAN 1 2030PATRIOT BONDSERIES AAFIFTY DOLLARSJOHN DOG321 WOOF STREETBARKLEY CITY01313167155EJAN 1 2000JAN 1 2030

Anatomy of a dog.

Their explainer labels five parts of this bond. Owner, serial number, maturity, issue date, denomination. Read the first one.

UNITED STATES SAVINGS BOND
Engraved portrait of John Dog in a powdered wig and black coat, framed in an oval with filigree and stars.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FIFTY DOLLARS

PATRIOT BOND

Owner
John Dog
Drawn here from the fields on Robinhood's own figure. The original is linked, not copied.

Legend

Owner
Theirs
The name on the paper. Robinhood put it there, in their own explainer, and left it.
Address
Nobody writes a street number for a placeholder. Somebody gave him an address.
Denomination
Theirs
Their legend calls it par value, or face value. A real $50 Patriot Bond cost twenty-five dollars: Series EE paper sold at half its face.
Issue Date
Theirs
The day the clock started, and the day the paper stops making sense. Patriot Bonds were announced in December 2001. This one is dated twenty-three months earlier.
Maturity Date
Theirs
Thirty years to the day, which is exactly right. Real savings bonds do not carry a maturity field at all: they print that interest ceases thirty years from issue.
Serial Number
Theirs
One bond, one number. You can read it off their own image.
Series
There has never been a Series AA. Federal regulation lists E, EE, H, HH and I, and no more. The Patriot Bond was not a series at all: it was an ordinary Series EE with a name printed on it.
Read it on Robinhood

Go and look.

It is still there, and it has not moved in six years. Both links go to Robinhood's own pages, not to a screenshot of them.

The article

What are U.S. Government Bonds?

Robinhood Learn, revision 5

Open the article

The figure

Anatomy of a Bond

Asset 2PzKOruPlkEBTbM6gIkHHf, revision 1

Open the image

Nothing here asks you to take our word for it. Every row beside this is a number you can pull out of a public index yourself, and check against the file that is sitting on their server right now.

Chain of custody

Article created
6 November 2019Three months before the dog existed on it.
Dog uploaded
11 February 2020, 22:15:19 UTCSomebody made a decision that evening. The mobile variant went up four seconds earlier.
Article last edited
11 December 2020Revision 5. Nobody has touched it since.
Image revision
1It has never been re-published, re-cropped, or corrected.
Checksum
QDDD2H6E…D3TRRIdentical across every archived copy from 2021 to today, and identical to the live file.
Archived
28 Jan 2021 to 27 Jul 2026Five independent captures. Same checksum in all five.
Domain move
learn.robinhood.com to robinhood.comBetween Oct 2024 and Mar 2025. He survived the migration untouched.

The contract.

On Robinhood Chain. Read the source yourself rather than taking any of this on trust.

Contract address

0x88c3ca9ea36fcf8cf382e7b4fc794ba7093764b7
Open the explorer
Name
John Dog
Symbol
John
Decimals
18
Supply
1,000,000,000

What the source says

Tax
NoneNo _update override exists, so nothing sits in the transfer path to take a cut.
Owner
Noneowner() reverts. There is no Ownable, and no privileged function of any kind.
Mint
Impossible_mint is called once, in the constructor. There is no mint function to call.
Limits
NoneNo max wallet, no max transaction, no cooldown, no blacklist, no pause.
Source
VerifiedPublished and matched on the explorer. You can read all 2,902 characters of it.

What we actually know.

Not a theory. One figure, on one page, public the whole time. Then you read the paper properly and it gets stranger.

I

He is standing in Washington's place

Robinhood's explainer carries a diagram called Anatomy of a Bond. Its sample bond is made out to John Dog of 321 Woof Street, Barkley City. On a real fifty dollar savings bond, the portrait oval holds George Washington. On theirs it holds a dog in a powdered wig.

Engraved portrait of John Dog in a powdered wig and black coat, framed in an oval with filigree and stars.
II

He is not in the words

His name appears nowhere in the text of the article. He exists only inside the image, which is exactly why he sat there unread for years. You cannot find him by searching the page. You have to look at the picture.

John Dog hauling the lever of a wooden printing press, ink on his coat, printed documents stacked beside him.
III

The paper cannot exist

Three things on it are impossible. There has never been a Series AA: federal regulation lists E, EE, H, HH and I and stops. Real savings bonds carry no maturity field at all, only a line saying interest ceases thirty years from issue. And it is stamped PATRIOT BOND but dated the first of January 2000, twenty months before the attacks that produced Patriot Bonds and twenty-three months before the Treasury announced them.

John Dog at full gallop through a colonial street, holding a rolled document above his head.
IV

He is on a second certificate

The same wigged portrait and the same scroll ribbon turn up again in a second Robinhood article, on a completely different instrument: a thousand dollar bearer bond. That one has no owner line, so the name is his alone. But read the serial numbers. His ends 7155e. The bearer bond's ends 7155e.

John Dog standing full length in colonial dress, black coat, breeches, buckled shoes.
V

The city is named after another dog

Robinhood's illustrations carry a second, unrelated dog: amber, no wig, who appears on a trading card of his own that gives his name as Karl Barkley. John Dog's address is 321 Woof Street, Barkley City. Somebody built him a town and named it after the other one.

John Dog hauling the lever of a wooden printing press, ink on his coat, printed documents stacked beside him.

Proofs from the shop.

Twenty plates of the same gentleman, cut from one die.

  • John Dog signing a document with a quill at a tall clerk's desk.
    Signing
  • John Dog holding a bond up to a window to inspect it against the light.
    Checking the watermark
  • John Dog at full gallop through a colonial street at night, a rolled document raised overhead.
    The ride
  • John Dog hauling the lever of a wooden printing press, printed sheets stacked beside him.
    The press
  • John Dog counting a stack of freshly printed notes by a single candle.
    Counting by candle
  • Close view of John Dog's hands cutting a rosette into a copper plate with a burin.
    The burin
  • John Dog working a rose engine lathe as it cuts a guilloche rosette.
    The rose engine
  • John Dog examining a bond through a jeweller's loupe.
    The loupe
  • John Dog lifting a certificate from an open drawer in a wall of flat files.
    The archive
  • John Dog rolling ink into the engraved lines of a steel plate with a dabber.
    Inking the plate
  • John Dog standing in the doorway of an open bank vault.
    The vault
  • John Dog speaking from behind a lectern, one paw raised mid-point.
    The address
  • John Dog walking down a treasury colonnade with a document case under one arm.
    The colonnade
  • John Dog tracing a line of entries in a vast open ledger, quill behind his ear.
    The ledger
  • John Dog shaking hands with an empty coat sleeve over a signed and sealed contract.
    Terms agreed
  • Formal seated portrait of John Dog, one arm resting on bound ledgers.
    Seated
  • Bust portrait of John Dog in profile inside an oval medallion.
    In profile
  • John Dog standing full length, square to the plate, in a formal certificate portrait.
    Full length
  • Close portrait of John Dog with his head lowered and eyes raised, sceptical.
    Unconvinced
  • John Dog raising a glass in a solitary toast.
    The toast

Put your John Dog on it.

Their bond has an owner line and a signature line. Take both. Your name goes where his is, and the document is yours to keep.

Everything happens in this browser. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is kept.

Sign below

It has not come due yet.

Issued the first of January 2000. Matures the first of January 2030. Their dates, printed on their figure, running the whole time.

Jan 1 2000Jan 1 2030

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