The Pennies Dilemma

So.. Since I stepped on the US soil, all what I had were around $300 and a couple of $50/$20 notes in my wallet, plus a dime and 2 nickels a friend of mine gave me when I was in UAE. So I would claim that I knew that US currency is either green notes - pinkish now - and metallic coins that held some value.

What couldn't understand was the pennies part. Small copper pieces that the cashiers gave me every time when I sincerely would have accepted a round-down. Although very insignificant in value, I always picked any falling penny even if it ran away on the metro stop , till Ashleigh told me one day to ignore it. It was like a light led up and told me I don't really need to care about these pieces much, since they were almost of no value. I started avoiding putting them in my wallet and would place them in my jackets or pants to give them to any homeless guy around the corner; which was another problem. Actually I found out it's quite a cheap donation to give the pennies you had, even if it was a whole scoop of them - they should be counted by that. So, I actually didn't know what to do.

To be honest, I started ignoring them. ask he cashier to keep them, or leave them stroll till they bury themselves under a pedestrian shoe, or whatever they wanted to do; it's America at the end.

I just had a question about them. I started wondering how many pennies I ignore, and whether or not it was a fortune that I'm losing. I tried thinking of losing a penny a day, and to make the math easier, made it 300 pennies a year. Reasonable enough ..
but there re around 300M Americans wandering around this country, and I am quite sure they learned like me - quite a FOB - not to pick this running away infinitesimal fortune. so that would be 90,000,000,000 homeless pennies, which is around $0.9 Billion. To be honest again, I didn't know America had this much money on the floor..

did you ?