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Comment by jacobolus | Hacker News Reader

There are plenty of folks who think that the US should phase out $100 bills and Europe should phase out €500 bills for essentially the same reason: they are used primarily by people trying to do very large transactions in an untraceable way, which has big overlap with money laundering, drug deals and other illegal purchases, tax evasion, etc.

Most day-to-day cash transactions work perfectly fine using $20 bills.

See e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/16/its-t...

> [...] illicit activities are facilitated when a million dollars weighs 2.2 pounds as with the 500 euro note rather than more than 50 pounds as would be the case if the $20 bill was the high denomination note.

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80% of US currency is in $100s[1]

The ECB is getting rid of the €500 note[2]

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/08/14/340356790/shoul...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/business/international/ecb...

> they are used primarily by people trying to do very large transactions in an untraceable way

And ? I don't want my large or small transactions traced, monitored and monetized upon the untouchables called banks and I don't understand anyone who agrees with this but otherwise supports freedom and anonymity in tech.

The whole thing is just an excuse for more control.

Using $20 bills wouldn’t make your all-cash transactions impossible. It would just make e.g. tax evasion, drug purchases, money laundering all a bit more cumbersome and conspicuous.

The burden would fall heavily on illicit transactions, while only slightly impacting most cash users, if at all.

(I’m not advocating for this, merely linking it as topical to the discussion.)

See Ken Rogoff’s NBER paper http://scholar.harvard.edu/rogoff/publications/costs-and-ben...

Quiet a lot of Europeans buy cars in cash why not ban private ownership of gold and silver coins while your at it as well.

You mean like this?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_double_eagle

Poor example. The government produced a coin and then ordered all of them melted down but 2. When 20 showed up, it is clear they were stolen and the government claimed their property. As a tax payer, I think this is a good idea.

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