I get that large bills provide more opportunities for conterfeiters, money launderers, and other (in the eyes of the State) bad actors, I am surprised to see how low the line is being drawn. In the US they only go up to $100.[0]<p>The worrying thing is simply that it's in the State's interest to have every monetary transaction be electronic and thus entirely traceable, also in aggregate; whereas it's in my interest to be able to spend (or loan, or give away) my money privately.<p>The lower the available currency denominations, the more this balance shifts towards the State.<p>[0]<a href="https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/denominations.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages...</a>
Okay, I understand that there are not <i>that</i> many usecases for a 500€ note and whenever I paid something >500€ in cash, I appreciated the flexibility of 50€ notes. But that Harvard Kennedy School also asked for the withdrawal of £50 and $100 notes? Again, $100 is probably not that useful, 100€ notes were usually a nice touch for Christmas gifts by parents/grandparents.<p>But £50? ATMs tend to give me a bunch of 50€ notes and I like them. Everybody likes them. They’re not too large that you can still buy gum with one and not too small that your wallet is all cluttered up. I understand that £50 is slightly more, but not that much more to go down to £20/20€ for it.
<i>Senior ECB officials said at the time [in 2016] that they needed more evidence that the notes facilitated criminal activity.</i><p>So did they find the evidence or not? The article omits this information.
Surprised it took them so long to get rid of them.<p>From an article[0] I found from when the UK decided to stop dealing with 500s<p>"many British gangsters stored their spoils in the form of €500 notes. While £1m weighs 50kg in £20 notes, the same value weighs only 2.2kg in €500 notes. This has made life easier for a growing number of criminals, since the euro's introduction in 2002. Should you wish, for example, you can swallow €150,000 in €500 notes, or hide €20,000 of them a cigarette packet"<p>[0]<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/goodbye-to-the-note-of-ill-repute-1972192.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/goodbye-to-the-no...</a>
«Swiss 1,000-franc note here to stay, says national bank. Switzerland vows to keep world’s most valuable single-denomination note despite ECB moves to pull its €500 note to help fight crime and terrorism.»<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/16/1000-swiss-franc-note-here-to-stay-swiss-national-bank" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/16/1000-swiss-...</a><p>Fr. 1000 is around $1000. I got my car in exchange for fifteen of these purple beauties five years ago.
Now let's see if the 1000 CHF note is still here to stay (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/16/1000-swiss-franc-note-here-to-stay-swiss-national-bank" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/16/1000-swiss-...</a>). I assume that the 1000 CHF note is only sort of useful, because you can't launder it nearly as easily. With a 500 Euro note, you can spread them around and deposit them in many countries. With a pile of 1000 CHF notes, someone is going to notice.
Supposedly they were nicknamed 'Bin Ladens' in some places, due to the association with money laundering. I have no idea how true that is.<p>Something we do actually know, though, is that Osama himself had two of them sewn into his clothing at the time of his death.<p>The €500 note was one of the world's most valuable banknotes. There's no denomination anywhere near it for, say, dollars or pounds or whatever.
In Canada, when I needed over a $1,000 to pay my dentist I happily carried a $1,000 note.<p>Of course, I had to order it from my bank and wait until the next time they had money being shipped in. It's a happy memory that I can never repeat, because the $1,000 bills are no longer made here: (or in the U.S.)Although we haven't declared war on drugs we do have concerns about crime.
From Wikipedia:<p>> The Serious Organised Crime Agency claimed that "90% of all €500 notes sold in the UK are in the hands of organised<p>crime", revealed during an eight-month analysis.
Seems like the mere existence of the 500 euro notes and those stupid enough to use them presents a pretty good profiling opportunity.