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Comment by tryingagainbro | Hacker News Reader

EU is about to make their 500 EUR illegal http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36208146 in a sense. If you're a drug dealer or a politician (no need to add the corrupt label in certain countries) I can help you with a few of them ;)

Yeah, making your cash illegal--it is unless you're willing to explain in year 2032 how you ended up with a 50 gallon drum full of 500 euro notes--will help. But in many countries where the government is corrupt and cannot provide the basic needs, IMO, they need to let the people try to make a living. Social contract: we cannot give you much, but we will not impede you as you try to feed your kids.

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This is nonsensical. The only even remotely rational implication is that it makes crime more difficult because large sums of money weigh more and take up more space. If you're accepting cash to evade taxes at your business though, you can just accept a bunch of 100 EUR notes as easily as 500 EUR notes. The same article says they're considering banning the $100 USD note, after they'd already pulled $500 USD from circulation many years ago.

I'm not a tax evader or a criminal and I've used $100 USD notes and 500 EUR notes during my travels simply out of convenience. It's ridiculous to implicate the users of these bank notes as criminals purely on the size of the denomination.

Not sure about the above, but nonetheless, corruption certainly exists in the open in the EU. Look to Portugal for a recent prominent example. All it takes are the right conditions and motivations:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/world/europe/angola-po...

So I can understand the €500, as I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable carrying that much cash around. But the articles also said there were calls to abolish the $100 (?) and £50 notes. Which I find really surprising.

The £50 note is not that different in value from the €50, and there's a lot of atms here that simply will not stock up €20 notes and good luck finding an atm that still dispenses €10 notes.

(Maybe it's a deliberate move by the banks to force people into using digital payments, if they can't get smaller denominations easily - it'd definitely be a 180)

From the article you linked: "The ECB says the €500 banknote remains legal tender and will always retain its value."

Yeah BUT you can bet your last dollar or euro that they will ask questions if you show up at a local bank with a few 500 euro notes, 20 years from now. Lots of questions and reports to the police will follow.

And they will not be accepted as "legal tender" to settle drug /illegal deals, so they are out, in a way.

Wouldn't you be asked some pointed questions if you walked into a bank with a stack of 500s? I know in the US there are people who run cash based businesses (construction/landscaping for example) that end up having to make special arrangements with their bank to avoid getting the third degree every time they bring in a deposit.

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