I want you to imagine something for a second.
Just picture yourself holding a single crisp
piece of paper. Right. It fits right in the palm
of your hand, you know, just like a normal dollar
bill. It's not a winning lottery ticket. And
well, it's not a deed to a mansion. But it is
a piece of official United States currency. Exactly.
But here is the catch. That one little piece
of paper you are holding is worth over two million
dollars today, which is just staggering to think
about. It is. And the moment you realize what
it is, a cold sweat breaks out. Because you also
realize something else, you could be immediately
arrested by federal agents just for having it
in your pocket. It sounds like the inciting incident
of a spy thriller, honestly. Holy. But it is
entirely real. If you were holding that note,
you'd be holding a piece of raw financial history
that was never ever meant for your hands or anyone
else's in the general public. Welcome to today's
Deep Dive. I am so glad you could join us because
today we are looking at something truly mind
-boggling. We really are. Our source material
for this exploration is a fascinating Wikipedia
article detailing the history, the design, and
like the sheer mechanics of the United States
$100 ,000 bill. Yes, you heard that right. A
$100 ,000 bill. It's an artifact that completely
challenges our basic understanding of what money
even is and who it's actually for. Right. And
our mission for this deep dive is to explore
the incredibly weird physical quirks of this
mythical currency, uncover exactly why the government
was secretly printing them during the darkest
days of the Great Depression. figure out what
this strange piece of paper teaches us about
the very nature of value. It's a huge topic.
It is. And I am joined by our resident expert,
the perfect guide to help us decode this bizarre
financial anomaly. Hello to you listening. I
am thrilled to be diving into this with you today.
It is a really fascinating subject. It's going
to be a fun one. Definitely. And I promise that
by the end of our conversation, We are going
to connect the dots between this one singular
piece of paper and the massive sprawling economic
chaos of the 1930s. We are going to look under
the hood of the American banking system itself.
I can't wait. But before we get into the massive
historical forces and the mechanics of it all,
we really need to understand the physical object
itself. Right. Because it's so unique. Because
it is strikingly different from the fives, tens,
and twenties sitting in your wallet right now.
OK, let's unpack this. Visually, this bill is
an absolute trip. It really is. It measures exactly
157 millimeters wide by 66 millimeters high.
Which, for context, is the exact same size as
the modern paper currency you use today. Oh,
really? So it doesn't feel oversized or anything?
No, not at all. It feels completely standard
in your hands. But that physical dimension is
right about where the similarities completely
end. Yeah, because when you look at the face
of the bill, The obverse staring back at you
is President Woodrow Wilson. The engraving of
his vignette portrait was done by a master engraver
named George Frederick Cummings Milley. And the
detail is just incredible. But the text surrounding
Wilson is where the legal weight of this thing
really hits you. Oh, absolutely. The text is
crucial. It reads, and I'm quoting here, this
is to certify that there is on deposit in the
Treasury of the United States of America. $100
,000 in gold payable to bearer on demand as authorized
by law. That phrasing is absolutely critical.
Payable in gold. Exactly. It also explicitly
states, located right on top of the treasury
seal, that this certificate is legal tender in
the amount thereof in payment of all debts and
dues, public and private. But the visual design
choices are what really make it feel like a totally
alien object. I mean, this doesn't even sound
like regular money. No, not at all. It sounds
like a literal golden ticket from Willy Wonka,
complete with, like, radiating orange sunbeams
on the back. Seriously, I want you to picture
this jarring design compared to a standard green
dollar bill. It's night and day. On the front,
there's very little gold ink at all. You just
have the treasury seal, two serial numbers, and
the words Washington D .C. printed in this very
bold font, but you flip it over to the reverse
side. There is no green anywhere. None. The reverse
exhibits bright, vibrant orange ink. There is
a massive number, 100 ,000. sitting right in
front of a US dollar sign. And as you mentioned,
there are literal orange rays extending outward
from the center, just sweeping across the back
of the bill. It is loud. Very loud. It is completely
impossible to mistake for a 20 or a 50. It just
screams, you know, I am carrying the weight of
a nation. It really does. And what's fascinating
here is that every single one of those design
choices, from explicitly stating it is payable
in gold to the use of that vibrant orange ink
on the back was a deliberate signal. Like a warning
label almost. Sort of, yeah. They were signaling
to whoever held it that this was an entirely
different class of currency. This is not a standard
Federal Reserve note. You know, the greenbacks
we are used to carrying around that rely purely
on trust in the government. This was a gold certificate.
So it wasn't money in the traditional fiat sense.
It was basically like a warehouse receipt for
a very heavy chunk of metal sitting in a vault.
Precisely. It was a paper stand -in for a massive
physical asset. If you held the paper, you literally
owned the gold. Wow. But labeling it a gold certificate
wasn't just a quirky design choice, was it? It
was a direct response to a massive national panic
happening right outside the bank's doors in 1934.
Yes, exactly. Which brings us to the historical
crisis that forced this bizarre bill into existence.
The printing presses at the Bureau of Engraving
and Printing started churning these out between
1934 and 1935 under the direct order of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR himself. Right. OK,
so FDR takes office. The economy's in free fall.
Why is his immediate reaction to print a $100
,000 bill? That seems totally counterintuitive
to me. To understand that, you really have to
look at the severe psychological and economic
trauma of the time. The depression. Right. It's
the Great Depression. Unemployment is skyrocketing.
Thousands of banks are quite literally failing.
They're shutting their doors and wiping out people's
life savings overnight. Just gone. Just gone.
Human nature being what it is, when people get
terrified about the abstract financial system,
they look for something solid. They look for
gold. Right. If you don't trust the bank ledger,
you want the physical metal in your hand. Exactly.
So people started pulling their wealth out of
the system and just hoarding it. And to combat
this, FDR signed executive order 6102, which
was later ratified by Congress in 1934. A very
controversial move. Yeah, because it strictly
prohibited the hoarding of gold certificates,
gold bullion, and coins by the public. But I
have to push back on the economic logic here
just to make sure we really understand it. Sure.
Wait, if people are scared during a depression,
saving their gold makes perfect sense for them
on an individual level. It does. They want to
protect their families. So why is the government
stepping in to stop them from doing what feels
safe? It is a phenomenal question, and it represents
a classic conflict between individual security
and systemic health. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, we have to look at the mechanics
of fractional reserve banking. Okay, lay it on
me. Think of the gold -backed economy like a
massive engine, and the gold itself is the oil.
When individual citizens get terrified, take
their gold and shove it under their mattresses
or bury it in coffee cans in the backyard. They're
draining the oil out of the engine. They are
draining the oil out of the engine completely.
And without oil, the gears just grind together
and lock up. Yes. The banks rely on holding a
fraction of their deposits in reserve, in this
case physical gold, to lend out money and keep
credit flowing. Right. That's how banking works.
When the gold disappears into private hands,
the bank's reserves just collapse. They have
to call in loans, they stop lending to businesses,
businesses can't make payroll, and workers get
fired. Yeah. It creates a brutal multiplier effect
of frozen credit. So the government realized
that individual survival instincts were actually
accelerating the collective collapse. That is
the tragic irony of a bank run. So the government's
perspective was that they had to force the gold
back into the system to restart the engine. By
making it illegal to hold it. Right. They legally
demanded citizens turn in their gold to the Federal
Reserve in exchange for standard paper currency.
And here is a crucial layer of depth to this.
OK. Right after confiscating all that gold at
the official rate of $20 .67 an ounce, Congress
passed the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. OK, what
did that do? This act suddenly revalued gold
to $35 an ounce. Wait, hold on. So the government
forces everyone to hand over their gold at 20
bucks and then instantly declares, actually,
it's worth 35 bucks now. Yep. That is a massive
overnight profit for the Treasury. It was an
ultimate arbitrage. By simply changing the peg,
the treasury's gold holdings surged in dollar
value. by billions, literally overnight. But
that newly created value needed to be formally
accounted for on the balance sheets. The Treasury
had to deposit this newly minted profit into
the Federal Reserve banks to actually use it
to fund government programs. Oh, I see. Which
perfectly explains why these massive certificates
needed to exist. Exactly. A government outlaws
private citizens from hoarding gold, takes it
all, revalues it, and suddenly has billions of
dollars in new ledger wealth. But That brings
up a massive contradiction. How so? If Executive
Order 6102 just made it strictly illegal for
regular citizens to hold onto gold certificates,
who on earth was this specific $100 ,000 bill
actually printed for? Well, it was printed exclusively
for the banks themselves. Specifically, it was
used for transactions between the United States
Treasury and the Federal Reserve Banks. Oh, wow.
Yeah. This bill never, ever circulated publicly.
Not once. Here's where it gets really interesting.
So if I'm understanding this right, this bill
was essentially the ultimate internal corporate
gift card. Huh. That's a great way to put it.
I mean, it wasn't money. for people to go out
and buy bread or pay rent. It was a highly specialized
physical tool to let banks move literal tons
of gold around on paper without having to actually
put heavy metal onto an armored truck. That is
a brilliant analogy. The ultimate corporate gift
card. You have to remember the Federal Reserve
System is a network of regional banks. New York.
Chicago, San Francisco, and they need to settle
massive accounts with each other and the Treasury
constantly. Imagine the New York Fed owes the
Chicago Fed $50 million at the end of the month.
Back then, because the system was strictly tied
to physical gold, settling that debt technically
meant moving the underlying asset. Moving $50
million worth of physical gold in 1934. Just
trying to picture the logistics of that. How
much does that even weigh? Well, at $35 an ounce,
$50 million is roughly 45 tons of solid gold.
45 tons. Yeah. Think about what it takes to move
45 tons of gold from New York to Chicago in the
1930s. You need heavily armored trains, platoons
of armed guards, massive logistical coordination.
And days of travel time. Exactly. And there is
always the massive risk of robbery or a train
derailment. It sounds like an absolute nightmare.
The security costs alone would be astronomical.
It was incredibly inefficient. So the $100 ,000
gold certificate digitized this process in a
completely analog world. Oh, I love that. Digitizing
an analog world. Right. By creating these ultra
high value certificates, the Treasury could hand
them to the Fed and the Fed branches could trade
them internally. They could settle these massive
multimillion dollar debts instantly just by handing
over a piece of paper. Exactly. They completely
bypassed the physical movement of the metal.
A bank clerk simply handed over a stack of a
few hundred pieces of paper with Woodrow Wilson's
face on them and a 45 ton debt was instantly
cleared. It's just wild to think about and you
know the Wikipedia article notes this $100 ,000
bill was actually part of a larger 1934 gold
certificate series. That's right. It wasn't entirely
alone. The series also included 100, 1000, and
$10 ,000 notes designed for these internal bank
transfers. But obviously, the 100 ,000 is the
crown jewel. Oh, absolutely. It is the absolute
peak of large denominations ever printed by the
United States. It was a tool of pure institutional
utility. It was never meant to sit folded in
a leather wallet. It was designed to sit in a
reinforced vault, quietly sliding from one bank's
ledger to another. Which brings us to the ultimate
fate of these bills. Because they were these
internal tools printed for a very specific narrow
window in time. just between roughly December
1934 and January 1935. A very short run. Yeah.
What happened to them once they served their
purpose? And more importantly, for you listening,
why can't you own one today? Well, the printing
run was relatively tiny given their immense face
value. Only 42 ,000 of these $100 ,000 bills
were ever produced by the Bureau of Engraving
and Printing. Let me just do the math on that
really quickly in my head. 42 ,000 bills times
$100 ,000 each. That is $4 .2 billion in 1934
money. That is a staggering amount of value locked
up in just 42 ,000 physical pieces of paper.
It is an astronomical concentration of wealth.
But as the decades passed, banking technology
evolved. Wire transfers and digital accounting
made physical certificates, even million dollar
sacks of them, completely obsolete. They just
didn't need them anymore. Right. Because their
use was so restricted and they were no longer
needed for daily settlement, the government decided
to clean house. In the years following their
commission, the vast majority of these bills
were actively destroyed. Oh, man. They were gathered
up, accounted for and incinerated. burning billions
of dollars of beautiful engraving and the ones
that somehow survived the incinerator. The remaining
few are strictly legally bound to the possession
of the United States federal government. We know
specifically that the Smithsonian Institution
and the Federal Reserve System hold the surviving
bills. And let's be crystal clear about the law
here, because this is the part that truly blows
my mind. OK. Let's say you were rummaging through
your grandparents attic, opening an old dusty
trunk. And you somehow found one of these orange
-backed beauties tucked inside a hollowed -out
book. A fun scenario, but... You wouldn't be
a secret millionaire. You'd be holding an illegal
artifact. That is correct. The law explicitly
decreed that possession of these certificates
by private individuals was entirely illegal.
Wow. The regulations enacted during the hoarding
crisis of the 1930s meant that holding gold certificates
was a federal crime. And because this specific
bill never circulated publicly to begin with,
if you have one, it means it was unlawfully removed
from federal custody. So you can't spend it.
You can't deposit it in your local bank branch.
You can't even keep it framed on your wall in
your living room. No, the Secret Service would
be knocking on your door very quickly. Outside
of the federal government, they can only be used
for educational purposes. Like in a museum. Which
practically means public viewing in highly secure
museums, yes. If you want to see one, you have
to go to where they are legally allowed to be
displayed. Where's that? For example, there is
a series 1934 issue with the serial number A
0000001A. The very first one off the press. The
very first one. And another with the serial number
ending in 20109A. Both of those specific bills
have been showcased behind very thick glass at
the National Museum of American History. Just
sitting there, a silent testament to a totally
different era of finance. And we mentioned at
the top of the deep dive that holding one is
like holding millions today. Yes, adjusting for
inflation. Right. Factoring in inflation from
1934 up to modern day, the estimated equivalent
value of just one of these bills is roughly $2
.29 million. One single piece of paper, 157 millimeters
wide, two and a quarter million dollars of purchasing
power. This raises an important question, doesn't
it? What's that? It challenges everything we
intuitively feel about what makes money real.
Here you have a physical object. The text, printed
beautifully and permanently, directly on it explicitly
states, this certificate is legal tender in the
amount thereof in payment of all debts and dues
public and private. It says it right there. The
bill itself declares that it is money. It declares
that it is legal to use for debts. But the underlying
law says you, the private citizen, absolutely
cannot hold it or use it. It's a profound paradox.
It is a piece of currency that simultaneously
asserts its own ultimate absolute value, while
the legal framework surrounding it completely
forbids the public from realizing that value.
That's fascinating. It beautifully highlights
the absolute power of the government to not just
print money, but to rigidly define what money
is, what form it can take, and exactly who is
allowed to hold it at any given moment in history.
Money isn't a natural law of physics. It is a
legally constructed system of rules. So what
does this all mean? We started by imagining holding
a piece of paper worth millions that could get
you arrested on the spot. Right. And over the
course of this deep dive, we've explored how
a single piece of paper featuring Woodrow Wilson's
face and bright radiating orange rays was created
as a drastic sweeping measure to fight the Great
Depression. It was a chaotic time. It was a tool
to stop panic gold hoarding. to unfreeze a terrified
economy by revaluing the metal itself, and to
act as a secret backstage pass, moving massive,
literal tons of wealth internally between Federal
Reserve banks without needing a fleet of armored
trains. It was a temporary, almost desperate
solution to a massive logistical and economic
bottleneck. And it's wild to think about how
far we've come. I want you to think about this.
The next time you use your phone to pay a utility
bill or, you know, the next time you use a banking
app to instantly split a dinner check with a
friend. It's basically magic. In a way, you are
effortlessly doing exactly what the United States
government once needed. A hundred thousand dollar
piece of paper, a presidential executive order
and the confiscation of private gold to accomplish.
You are moving abstract value instantly without
the weight of physical metal. That is exactly
right. Today, we transfer millions, even billions
of dollars between banks globally in milliseconds,
and we do it using nothing but invisible digital
code. But back in 1934, achieving that immense
instant transfer of wealth required a physical
object. It required a beautifully engraved piece
of paper that a bank teller actually had to hold
in their hands. It's hard to wrap your head around.
And it leaves me with this final thought. As
our money becomes completely invisible, as we
move into the era of central bank digital currencies,
where money is just programmable code on a government
server, what happens to that ultimate power to
define money? Oh, wow. The $100 ,000 bill shows
us the government can legally dictate who is
allowed to hold wealth. If all money becomes
digital, they don't just control who holds it.
They could theoretically program an expiration
date on your savings or dictate exactly what
you are legally allowed to buy with it. That
is a scary thought. When we trade the physical
paper for the convenience of code, what tangible
safeguards against that power are we leaving
behind? That is a phenomenal, slightly terrifying
question, and definitely something to mull over
the next time you tap your card at the grocery
store. Thank you so much for joining us on this
deep dive into one of the rarest, weirdest pieces
of American history. Keep questioning the everyday
systems around you, keep looking closely at the
invisible mechanics you take for granted, and
we will catch you on the next deep dive.