Dear U.S. Treasury Department:

With word that the Presidential dollar coin program has been shuttered, I'd like to think that the third time is the charm when it comes to realizing that a dollar coin, given the current state of our currency, is not going to work. I assume at some point you'll try this again (or be compelled to try it again), so with that in mind here is my plan for Making it Better: the Dollar Coin.

1. Get rid of the $1 bill.  It should be obvious that this has to happen before anything else. People are conditioned to use bills, and given a choice between a bill and a coin they'll revert to the bill. Cash registers are set up to take $1 bills, as are most vending machines (though many can take dollar coins as well). Both Canada and the UK stopped printing one dollar/pound notes to phase in the coin replacement, which took root as the bills left circulation. You don't do this, the $1 coin will never work.

2. Make it thick. The one pound coin in the UK is easy to pick out of a pocketful of change, as it's noticeably thicker than other coins. With all the focus on trying to find a unique diameter for the $1 coin, you've rejected the obvious dimension for differentiating it from other coins.

3. Throw in another obvious tactile difference. Just in case thickness doesn't seem like enough of a difference, you could make the coin non-round (check out the UK's 50p coin for an example) or go with a bi-metallic design such as the UK 2 pound or Canadian $2 coins. You could also do something with the edge of the coin, such as leave the edges smooth or use something other than the traditional milled edges. If you can get Braille on the Alabama state quarter, you can get some sort of raised design on a dollar coin.

4. Keep Washington on the dollar. I'm not particularly wedded to this - he is on the quarter, after all - but I figure this would be a sop to the traditionalists. You could also transfer future versions of the 50 State Quarters program to the dollar coin, which I figure would boost circulation, even if artificially.

5. Move the lettered Federal Reserve Seal to the $5. There is a subset of people who like knowing where their $1 bills came from - be they Where's George? enthusiasts or not - and moving the seal that uses the Federal Reserve Bank letter to the $5 will soften the blow of losing the one dollar bill.

I hope this helps, and look forward to seeing these suggestions implemented when you try dollar coins again sometime around 2023.