Right now in Australia, there is over $33 billion
worth of $100 notes just out there in circulation.
Yeah, which is just a massive number. Right.
Mathematically, they make up nearly half the
physical cash wealth of the entire country. And
yet, if you live there or if you visit, almost
no one ever actually sees them. No, you really
don't. You don't get them in your change of the
grocery store. You don't see people handing them
over for a coffee. Even ATMs rarely dispense
them. They're practically invisible. It is a
massive statistical paradox, really. You have
this object that is undeniably central to the
nation's wealth, I mean, produced in the hundreds
of millions, yet it completely avoids daily transactional
velocity. Yeah. Exactly. It's just hiding in
plain sight, you know. Functioning way less is
walking around money and more as well a shadow
asset. And that brings us to today's deep dive.
We are so glad you are here with us. Today we're
unpacking a really fascinating Wikipedia article
all about the Australian $100 note. It's a great
topic. It really is. Reading through the source
material completely shattered my understanding
of what cash actually is. We're looking at a
physical object that functions as this masterclass
in anti -counterfeiting technology, a canvas
for national identity, and bizarrely enough,
the center of a massive controversy regarding
the underground economy. So okay, let's untack
this. Sounds good. And our mission today is to
look beyond the monetary value with a note. We
want to decode what the physical evolution of
this specific banknote reveals about much larger
macroeconomic forces. Right. By tracing its history,
we are essentially reading a physical record
of inflation, tracking an arms race and optical
engineering, and observing a real -time debate
about, you know, the future of society's financial
privacy. Which is wild for a piece of plastic.
But to truly appreciate the high -tech futuristic
present of the Australian $100 note, we actually
have to start with the fact that it was Well,
it was entirely missing from the original line
up. Yeah, it didn't even exist. Right. When Australia
modernized its currency and rolled out its decimal
system in 1966, you know, leaving behind the
old pounds and shillings and pence, there was
no one hundred dollar note. They released this
full suite of new decimal notes for the modern
era, but they stopped short of one hundred. Why
is that? Well, in 1966, $100 represented just
a massive amount of purchasing power. The average
citizen simply didn't need to carry that kind
of concentrated wealth for daily transactions.
The physical notes available just matched the
economic reality of the time. But economic realities
don't stay frozen in time, right? Exactly. It
wasn't until 18 years later in 1984 that the
$100 note finally appeared. And the source material
specifically points to inflation as the driving
force there. Yep, inflation changes everything.
Over almost two decades, the purchasing power
of those existing denominations had shifted so
drastically that carrying around large amounts
of cash, you know, in smaller notes, had become
highly impractical. And if we connect this to
the bigger picture, physical currency acts as
a historical receipt for those macroeconomic
forces. The central bank doesn't just print larger
denominations for fun. Right, they don't just
wake up and say, let's make a bigger bill. No,
they are forced to do so when the fundamental
value of the currency changes. So the mere existence
of that 1984 note is physical proof of the inflation
that eroded the currency's value between 66 and
84. You know, it makes me think of an analogy.
Ah, let's hear it. So you know what a massive
complex video game has released? The decimal
system rollout in 1966 was kind of like the base
game. It worked perfectly for the economy at
launch. OK, I'm falling. But over 18 years, the
in -game economy inflates. Suddenly, players
are trying to buy high -value goods, but they're
forced to carry around thousands of low -value
gold coins. The inventory system just breaks
down under the weight of it all. That's a really
good way to put it. So the developers in this
case, the Reserve Bank of Australia, are forced
to issue a software patch. In 1984, they drop
a brand new massive value item into the game
environment just to stabilize the physical mechanics
of buying and selling. The $100 note was basically
that patch. And what a patch it was. The 1984
version was a paper note, right? Printed in this
very distinct light turquoise blue color. Yep,
turquoise blue. And the design choices were incredibly
deliberate. They focused heavily on scientific
achievement and exploration. So on the front,
the obverse, you had the Antarctic explorer,
Sir Douglas Mawson. Oh, wow. Yeah, and he was
set against a background of a mountain range
rendered in geological strata, complete with
this large diamond shape on the left. And then
on the reverse, they featured John Tebbott. He
was a pioneering Australian astronomer. They
framed him with imagery of the observatory he
built and a local church. That's pretty intricate.
It was. And it wasn't just decorative, you know.
Intricate, detailed artwork is always the first
line of defense against forgery. But beneath
those portraits of scientists lay the actual
security technology of the era. Right. The stuff
that actually stops the counterfeiters. They
relied on a watermark of Captain James Cook embedded
in the white field of the note. Which by the
way was actually a deliberate callback because
that exact same watermark was used in the last
issue of the pre -decimal banknotes. A nice little
historical touch. Yeah, and alongside that they
embedded a metallic strip directly into the paper
on the left side of the obverse. Think about
the mechanics of that metallic strip for a moment.
You can't just print a piece of metal onto paper
using standard ink. No, obviously not. The strip
has to be physically woven into the cotton or
paper pulp during the manufacturing process.
It was designed to completely thwart anyone trying
to replicate the note with surface -level printing
presses. That was totally cutting edge in 1984.
But the technological landscape was shifting
rapidly. The late 80s and early 90s saw this
massive leap in commercial printing and the invention
of high quality color photocopiers. Which was
a nightmare for central banks. I can imagine.
Suddenly a physical paper note, even with a woven
metallic strip, was incredibly vulnerable. The
counterfeiters were catching up to the technology.
It triggered a fundamental crisis for currency
issuers worldwide. I mean, when anyone with access
to a high -end office photocopier can potentially
replicate the nation's highest denomination,
you can no longer rely on paper. You just have
to invent an entirely new media. Precisely. You
have to change the game entirely. Which brings
us to May 1996. Just 12 years after introducing
the paper $100 note, Australia completely overhauled
it. They released a brand new version designed
by Bruce Stewart, and this one wasn't paper at
all. Right, it was a green polymer note. They
abandoned cotton and paper entirely for a specialized,
durable plastic. And the shift to polymer is
like one of the most significant engineering
leaps in the history of physical money. Oh, absolutely.
The brilliance of polymer is that it allows for
security features that are physically impossible
to achieve on traditional substrates. It completely
changed the roles of engagement with counterfeiters.
And along with the new material came a massive
aesthetic pivot. They moved away from the scientific
explorers of the 84 note and shifted to the arts
and military history. Yes, the 1996 note features
portraits of the world -renowned soprano Dame
Nellie Melba and the brilliant engineer and First
World War general Sir John Monash. And accompanying
Monash is vivid imagery from the First World
War, right? Including that famous depiction of
John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey. It's
this sweeping dramatic narrative of national
identity. But the art, beautiful as it is, is
entirely secondary to the optical physics at
play. Oh, for sure. The most famous innovation
is the clear, transparent window built right
into the plastic. Inside that window, there is
a raised, embossed image of the number 100 and
a printed lyrebird. Let's break down why that
window is such a big deal. When you're printing
on polymer, you're essentially starting with
a sheet of clear plastic. Right. You then apply
layers of opaque ink everywhere except where
you want the window to be. If a counterfeiter
tries to replicate this on paper, what are they
going to do? Like, cut a hole in the paper and
tape a piece of clear plastic over it? They could
try, but it wouldn't work. Exactly. The moment
someone touches that fake note, they would instantly
feel the tape in the seams. The tactile nature
of the polymer itself becomes a massive security
wall. And beyond the window, they layered in
multiple covert features. They incorporated fluorescent
coloring into the serial numbers and a specific
value patch that remains completely invisible
until the banknote is placed under ultraviolet
light. Oh wow, that's so cool. Yeah, and they
heavily utilized microprinting. That's text so
miniscule it registers to the naked eye as a
solid line, but reveals actual words under a
magnifying glass. And I'm guessing normal printers
couldn't do that. Not at all. Standard commercial
printers of the era simply lacked the resolution
to replicate that text without it blurring into
a smudge. Here's where it gets really interesting.
My absolute favorite feature is the Federation
Star Trick. Oh, that's a brilliant piece of engineering.
It is. So on the front of the note, they print
four points of a star. On the back of the note,
in the exact same spot, they print the other
three points. Yep. If you hold the note flat
and look at it, it just looks like a bunch of
weird, disconnected geometric shapes. But the
moment you hold that note up to the light, The
translucent nature of the polymer allows the
front and back to combine. They form a flawless,
seamless, seven -pointed federation star. The
precision required for that is staggering. In
the printing industry, it's called registration.
To make that star align, the printing plates
on the front of the polymer sheet and the printing
plates on the back have to strike the plastic
with micrometer accuracy. Micrometers? That's
insane. It really is. If the alignment is off
by even a fraction of a millimeter, the star
looks jagged and broken when held to the light.
counterfeiters trying to print the front, flip
the material, and print the back almost always
fail the registration test. It's literally the
1990s physical analog version of two -factor
authentication. That's a great way to frame it.
You have two independent pieces of information,
the front pattern and the back pattern. Right.
You can't just copy the front and you can't just
copy the back. You have to perfectly align both
separate factors through a translucent medium
to verify that the item is genuine. If the star
doesn't line up, Access is denied. It forces
the counterfeiter to master not just the visual
reproduction of the art, but the industrial manufacturing
tolerances of a central bank. Yeah. Which is
nearly impossible. But the race against financial
crime never stops, does it? Never. Counterfeiters
eventually get their hands on better technology,
which means the central bank has to basically
tear it all down and start over again. Yeah.
According to our source material, in September
2012, the Reserve Bank of Australia announced
the Next Generation Bank Note program. They had
to upgrade every single denomination to stay
ahead of modern threats. And developing currency
at this level of security is an exhaustive, painstaking
process. They announced the program in 2012,
but the new $100 note wasn't actually unveiled
and released into circulation until late 2020.
Eight years. Yeah. That is an eight -year development
cycle for a single piece of physical currency.
For this 2020 iteration, they kept the core historical
portraits of Melba and Monash, but they completely
shifted the supporting imagery to focus on Australian
flora and fauna. The new note features the Australian
masked owl and the golden wattle, which is Australia's
national floral emblem. And alongside the visual
overhaul, they introduced a profound functional
change. The 2020 Note includes a brand new tactile
feature, specifically engineered physical bumps
designed to help people who are blind or have
low vision to independently distinguish the $100
Note from other denominations just by touching
it. But wait, I want to push back on this a little
bit. We live in an era where everyone just taps
their phone or their smartwatch to pay for everything,
right? Digital transactions are completely dominating
our daily lives. They are. Why on earth did the
government spend eight years and millions of
dollars engineering physical bumps onto a piece
of plastic when physical cash usage seems to
be plummeting across the board? This raises an
important question, and it strikes at the philosophical
core of what public money actually is. Okay,
how so? Well, a national currency is not a private
tech product. It is a fundamental public utility.
As long as it exists in a physical form, it must
remain universally accessible to every single
citizen, regardless of their physical abilities
or their access to digital banking infrastructure.
So if you just let physical cash degrade or you
don't make it accessible, you're basically locking
people out of the economy. Exactly the opposite
of what a central bank is supposed to do. If
you only focus on digital payment rails, you
risk entirely excluding the most vulnerable populations,
the elderly, the unbanked, and those with visual
impairments. That makes a lot of sense. Imagine
trying to navigate a physical cash economy where
you can't see the value of the notes you're being
handed in change. Upgrading the tactile accessibility
isn't just a nice design choice. It is a strict
mandate of financial inclusion. Okay, so we've
tracked this intense evolution from a note that
was deemed completely unnecessary in 1966, to
a paper inflation fix with woven metal in 1984,
to a high tech polymer 2FA system in 1996, to
an inclusive tactile powerhouse in 2020. It's
been quite the journey. It really has. But despite
all of this massive investment in design and
accessibility, the actual usage of the $100 note
presents this bizarre paradox we talked about
at the very start of the show. Oh, the circulation
statistics provided in the source are just incredible
to look at. In June 2005, there were roughly
149 million of these $100 notes in circulation.
At that time, they accounted for about 18 .5
% of all notes out there. The cash value of those
149 million notes was nearly $15 billion, which
made up 41 .9 % of the total value of all denominations.
So back in 2005, the $50 note was still the undisputed
king in terms of total cash value. But then watch
what happens over the next decade. By June 2017,
the number of $100 notes had more than doubled.
It jumped to an astonishing 337 million notes
in circulation. Staggering increase. By 2017,
they made up 22 % of the total physical notes,
and their combined value hit 33. That means in
2017, the $100 note accounted for 46 % of the
total value of all cash in the Australian economy.
Nearly half of the nation's physical wealth was
tied up in this single high -value denomination.
So what does this all mean? We have a denomination
that holds nearly half the physical cash value
in the country, yet you almost never see one.
If I go to buy a sandwich, I'm tapping a card
or handing over a 20. No one is carrying around
a stack of hundreds. for daily errands. No, definitely
not. The $100 note is the dark matter of the
Australian economy. Oh, the astrophysics concept.
I like that. Yeah. Think about how dark matter
works in space. Scientists mathematically know
that dark matter makes up the vast majority of
the universe's mass because they can see its
gravitational pull on other objects. The math
absolutely proves it's there. Right, but you
can't actually observe it directly. Exactly.
It doesn't interact with light, so it's practically
invisible to us. That is exactly what is happening
with this banknote. The Reserve Bank's statistics
mathematically prove that 337 million of these
notes exist. The math shows the masses there,
but in everyday observable transactional life,
they are invisible. Because they aren't being
used for transactions, they are being used as
a dense store of value. When you want to hoard
cash, physically storing $20 notes takes up five
times as much physical volume as storing $100
notes. That makes physical storage way easier.
Exactly. A lot of this dark matter is sitting
in legitimate safes or under mattresses held
by people who simply distrust banks or want emergency
reserves. But, as the source material heavily
implies, this density of value makes the note
incredibly useful for the black economy. Right,
the underground economy, the untaxed, unregulated,
cash -only transactions that completely bypass
the official financial system. If you are trying
to move large sums of money, without leaving
a digital footprint, whether that's for tax evasion,
paying off the books, labor, or funding illicit
markets, you want the highest denomination possible.
And this brings us to a major institutional controversy.
In December 2016, reports surfaced suggesting
that the Australian government was actively considering
abolishing the $100 note entirely. Wow. just
getting rid of it. The rationale was simple.
By getting rid of the largest denomination, you
essentially disrupt the logistics of the black
economy. You make it physically harder, heavier,
and more conspicuous to transport and hide large
amounts of untaxed cash. And to be clear to you
listening, we aren't taking a side here on whether
demonetizing a national currency is good or bad
fiscal policy. We are simply looking at the incredible
paradox playing out in the facts we have. Right,
we're just looking at the facts. In 2016, you
have government reports openly debating whether
to kill the note off entirely to choke the black
economy. But at the exact same time, the Reserve
Bank of Australia officially pushed back. They
stated clearly they had no plans to abolish the
note. And in fact, they were right in the middle
of that massive eight year multimillion dollar
next gen program to upgrade the note's security
and tactile features for its grand release in
2020. What's fascinating here is the stark tension
between different arms of institutional planning.
Yeah, there are total odds. The government is
looking at the note as a loophole for financial
crime that needs to be closed. But the Reserve
Bank is looking at the note as a vital public
utility that must be defended, upgraded, and
made more accessible for legitimate users. It's
a crazy dual nature. It highlights the dual nature
of high value cash perfectly. It is simultaneously
a lifeline for financial inclusion and privacy,
and a preferred tool for operating outside the
visible economy. The Reserve Bank ultimately
chose to defend the utility of the note, investing
heavily in its future rather than abandoning
it. It is genuinely wild to think about how much
history, engineering, and institutional controversy
is folded up inside a single piece of polymer.
It really is. We started this deep dive looking
at a missing piece of the 1966 decimal rollout.
We realized that inflation forced a physical
paper patch in 1984. We watched the technological
marvel of polymer and optical physics emerge
in the 90s to fight off counterfeiters, and we
ended up navigating the dark matter of the modern
underground economy. It absolutely proves that
a banknote is never just a static piece of money.
It is an active reflection of the society that
prints it. It maps out a country's scientific
achievements, its historical figures, its economic
struggles with inflation, and its ongoing technological
ingenuity. Which leaves us with a really compelling
thought to end on. The Reserve Bank officially
refused to abolish the $100 note to fight the
black economy back in 2016, choosing instead
to upgrade it. But as digital payments and tap
-to -pay infrastructure continue to naturally
rise around the world, will the $100 note eventually
disappear anyway? Not because a government mandated
its destruction, but simply because the dark
matter of physical cash naturally evaporates
as society moves entirely online. A physical
tool, no matter how brilliantly engineered, is
only as permanent as our societal need to use
it. The next time you manage to actually spot
one of these elusive notes in the wild, take
a second to hold it to the light. look at that
Federation Star perfectly aligned, feel the tactile
bumps on the plastic, and appreciate the absolute
master class in engineering resting in the palm
of your hand. Thank you so much for joining us
on this deep dive. We'll catch you next time.