I want you to take a second and just visualize
your wallet. Yeah. Think about what's actually
in there right now. Right. If you pull it out
and look inside, what do you see? You probably
have some physical cash tucked away, a few ones,
maybe some fives, a 20. And if you just hit the
ATM, maybe you've got a crisp $100 bill staring
back at you. Pretty standard stuff. Exactly.
We are entirely accustomed to that specific lineup
of numbers. It feels, I don't know, fixed. Permanent.
But what if you were walking around carrying
a $10 ,000 bill? Which sounds completely absurd.
Right. Or... Stretch your imagination even further.
What if you had a $100 ,000 bill sitting right
there in that letter fold? I mean, it sounds
like absolute fiction. It sounds like play money
from a board game. But those bills were very,
very real. And that is the wild reality we're
getting into today. We've got a fascinating stack
of historical research in front of us covering
the large, like almost mythical denominations
of United States currency. It's a really incredible
history. It really is. So our mission for this
deep dive is to explore these forgotten titans
of the U .S. Treasury. We are going to investigate
why these massive bills had to exist in the first
place, who on earth was actually using them,
and the dramatic story of why the government
actively hunted them down to make them vanish
from our lives. Okay, let's unpack this. Well,
I think we so often think of cash as static,
you know, like a $20 bill today serves the exact
same basic function as a 20 did a few decades
ago. Right, buys things. Exactly. But what this
deep dive really reveals is that currency is
actually a living reflection of America's technological
and historical evolution. Money adapts to the
specific pressures of its era. So it's not just
paper? Not at all. When you look at these massive
denominations, you aren't just looking at vintage
paper. You're looking at the financial mechanics
of a nation desperately trying to navigate massive
growth spurts, fund enormous wars, and survive
unprecedented economic crises. You know, when
I first started digging into the timeline of
these giant bills, my mind went straight to the
roaring 20s. It's like, I picture top hats, tycoons.
Maybe some Gilded Age Monopoly Man throwing around
$1 ,000 notes. But the timeline is so much older
than that. It really is. We are talking about
the very foundations of the country. Yeah, the
origins really do trace back to the birth of
the nation. The first $500 note was actually
issued by North Carolina. It was authorized by
legislation way back on May 10th, 1780. Wait,
1780? We were literally still fighting the Revolutionary
War. Precisely. And the context of that war is
everything. The continental currency was just
crashing. Oh, wow. Yeah, hyperinflation was rampant.
When the value of your standard currency plummets,
you need larger and larger denominations just
to conduct basic institutional business. That
makes sense. So Virginia quickly followed North
Carolina's lead. They authorized the... printing
of $500 and $1 ,000 notes in October of 1780.
Wow. And then, not even a year later, Virginia
authorized $2 ,000 notes. It's just staggering
to think about what $2 ,000 represented in 1781.
A massive fortune. And the scale of these bills
just kept growing alongside the country. By the
time we get to the earliest federal bank notes
in 1861, like right at the onset of the American
Civil War, Congress authorized notes for $500,
$1 ,000, and even $5 ,000. Which is just a colossal
amount of money for that era. Right. Now, I have
to jump in here with a reality check for you
listening, because the inflation math is wild.
Holding a $5 ,000 bill in 1861 wasn't like having
a really nice paycheck in your pocket. Given
the inflation over the last century and a half,
carrying that note was practically carrying a
physical house in your pocket. Yeah, quite literally.
Which leads me to a major point of confusion
when I was going through this data. Wasn't this
incredibly risky? I mean... Who in their right
mind was walking down a dirt road with a $5 ,000
bill in 1861? If a gust of wind catches that,
your entire life is ruined. It's a very fair
question, and it highlights a fundamental misunderstanding
of how these specific notes functioned. These
high denomination bills were not intended for
everyday citizens buying groceries or paying
a blacksmith to shoe a horse. If we connect this
to the broader logistical challenges of the time,
these were critical tools for massive government
financing and institutional transfers. Ah, so
this is about the logistics of war. Entirely.
Think about the absolute nightmare of funding
the War of 1812 or the Civil War. The federal
government and the major banks backing them needed
to move vast, unprecedented sums of value. And
you couldn't just wire the money digitally back
then? Right, obviously not. If the Treasury needed
to settle a massive debt with a bank in New York,
they had two choices. They could load up heavily
guarded horse -drawn wagons filled with literal
tons of gold and silver coins. Which sounds incredibly
slow. Slow and super vulnerable to robbery, yeah.
Or they could send an official with a small,
discreet lockbox containing a few large denomination
paper notes. Oh, that makes perfect sense. They
weren't buying a loaf of bread. They were funding
entire armies. And the records show these early
federal issues were often called interest bearing
treasury notes. I think we need to clarify that
because cash today doesn't pay us interest just
for holding it. No, it doesn't. And that's a
crucial distinction. Those early high denomination
notes functioned almost more like government
bonds than the pocket money we use today. Interesting.
The government was essentially issuing an IOU
to investors or banks, promising to pay them
back with interest over, say, a three -year period.
It was a mechanism to quickly raise capital to
fight the Civil War. Even the Confederate government
utilized this exact strategy, issuing their own
$501 ,000 notes. And what's amazing to me is
the sheer artistry involved. They didn't just
print a giant number on a blank piece of paper
to serve as a receipt. Oh, the artwork is stunning.
11 different types of US currency issued in these
high denominations, spread across nearly 20 different
series dates. We're talking about incredibly
intricate engravings. Yeah, true masterpieces.
You have allegorical figures symbolizing justice
and liberty. There's even a $1 ,000 note from
1878 that features DeWitt Clinton alongside this
elaborate engraving of Christopher Columbus sitting
in his study. The visual history alone is remarkable.
You have to remember, before the 1870s, the Bureau
engraving and printing wasn't even responsible
for U .S. currency. Oh, really? Yeah. Some of
these early notes from the 1860s were printed
on very thin paper, making them incredibly fragile.
But the designs were purposefully elaborate to
project authority, project stability, and, crucially,
to deter counterfeiting. So the big portraits
weren't just for show. Exactly. You had sweeping
portraits of figures like Alexander Hamilton,
Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Andrew Jackson.
The government needed these bills to visually
communicate the absolute wealth and resilience
of the nation. OK, so we've established that
these early massive notes were essentially logistical
tools to finance wars and build the early American
economy. But reading through the historical arc,
the peak of this enormous currency doesn't actually
happen during a war. No, it doesn't. The absolute
pinnacle of the mega bill happens during a completely
different kind of crisis, the Great Depression.
Which brings us to 1934, specifically the series
1934 gold certificates. Right. This is the era
that produced the absolute behemoths, the granddaddy
of them all. The one hundred thousand dollar
bill featuring President Woodrow Wilson. Just
the concept of a single piece of paper. bearing
a face value of $100 ,000 during the depths of
the Great Depression is dizzying. It is. But
to understand the mechanism of why this specific
astronomical bill had to be created, we have
to look at the mechanics of what happened the
year prior. OK. On March 9th, 1933, President
Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102.
This was a drastic, highly controversial measure
aimed at stabilizing the economy. And what did
it do exactly? It essentially repealed the gold
standard for the public. the order compulsorily
confiscated public gold. I just let's pause and
visualize that for the listener because it's
hard to fathom today. Imagine the federal government
issuing an order demanding that you go to your
bank empty out your safe deposit box of all your
gold coins and gold bullion and hand it over
to the government in exchange for regular paper
money. It's wild to think about, but that is
exactly what occurred. Citizens and businesses
turned in their gold. And because all of that
physical wealth was now rapidly being consolidated
within the government's vaults, they faced a
massive accounting problem. Right. They have
all the gold now. The federal government, and
specifically the Federal Reserve System, held
all this gold, and they needed a way to represent
that massive transfer of wealth internally on
their own ledgers. And that's where Woodrow Wilson
steps in. Precisely. What's fascinating here
is how the backing of money fundamentally shifted.
These series 1934 gold certificates, the hundreds,
thousands, 10 ,000s, and especially that $100
,000 note were created exclusively for intergovernmental
transactions. So just between government branches.
Exactly. They were the mechanical solution to
balancing the books between the various Federal
Reserve banks. You know, the best analogy I can
think of for this is like settling the bar tab
at the end of the night between friends, but
on a macro economic scale. That's a great way
to put it. Like, if the Federal Reserve Bank
of Chicago suddenly owed the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York $50 million because of the way
funds were shifting around the country, they
didn't want to load up a train with $50 million
worth of heavy physical gold and ship it across
the country. No, way too risky. Right. Instead,
the officials behind closed doors just handed
over a small stack of these $100 ,000 bills to
settle the ledger. That is the exact mechanism.
They were the ultimate insider currency because
they strictly for these massive internal bank
transfers. They were never issued to the general
public. Ever. Never. To this day, it remains
completely illegal for a private citizen to hold
a real $100 ,000 bill. You cannot privately own
one. The only exceptions are what are called
unifis specimens held in certain institutional
settings. And just to clarify for everyone listening,
a unifis specimen basically means it's a dummy
note. It's printed on only one side, essentially
serving as a poster for a museum display. It
isn't real spendable legal tender. Right. If
you somehow found a real double -sided $100 ,000
bill hidden in your great -grandfather's attic,
you'd be holding illegal government property.
You absolutely would, and there's a beautiful
irony in the physical dimensions of these notes
as well. Oh, how so? Well, the historical records
note a shift between the large -size knights
of the earlier eras and the small -size notes
we know today. Prior to 1928, US currency was
physically larger, about 7 and 3 eighths by 3
and 1 eighth inches. So noticeably bigger than
what we have now. Exactly. But in 1928, the Treasury
standardized everything to the smaller physical
footprint we currently use. So when they printed
these astronomical sums in 1934, including the
$100 ,000 bill, they were printed on the exact
same physical size of paper as the crumpled $1
bill in your wallet right now. Wow. The physical
footprint shrank while the numerical value reached
its absolute zenith. So these paper behemoths
are the absolute backbone of the Federal Reserve
in the mid -20th century. They're literally holding
up the accounting of the entire banking system.
They were. So how do we get from that peak of
relevance to the Fed actively throwing them into
incinerators just a few decades later? It was
a fascinating collision of technology and law
enforcement. The Treasury officially stopped
printing new high denomination bills on December
27th, 1945. Production completely ceased. But
they were still out there. Right. The existing
bills continued to circulate and be used by banks
for decades after that. The true death blow didn't
arrive until July 14th, 1969, when the Federal
Reserve System officially discontinued them entirely.
Now, reading through the official Treasury statements,
the primary reason given for the discontinuation
was simply lack of use. That was the official
line. But looking at the historical context of
the late 1960s, I have to push back on that a
bit. Was it really just because banks were bored
of them or was it because the wrong people had
started using them? You hit on the dual reality
of the 1969 purge. Yes, lack of use was the polite
official line and mechanically... It was true
for the banking sector. Because of computers.
Basically, yeah. We have to look at the massive
technological shift happening. The introduction
of secure electronic money systems and wire transfers
made moving physical cash obsolete for banks.
If a Federal Reserve Bank needs to transfer $100
million in 1969, they don't need a briefcase
of Woodrow Wilson's anymore. They just transmit
the data. It's faster, infinitely safer and cheaper.
OK, so the legitimate banking system outgrew
them. But the criminal underworld didn't. Exactly
the opposite. The criminal element found them
incredibly useful. The historical data points
out that rising concerns about counterfeiting
and the use of untraceable cash for unlawful
activities, specifically the booming illicit
drug trade and massive money laundering operations,
were the unstated but major driving factors in
the government's decision to kill off these bills.
I want you, the listener, to visualize the logistics
of this for a second. Let's do the math on smuggling
a million dollars. It's pretty eye opening. A
million dollars in crisp, standard $100 bills.
is bulky. It weighs over 20 pounds. You need
a sizable, sturdy briefcase or a heavy duffel
bag to move it around discreetly. But a million
dollars in $10 ,000 bills, that is exactly 100
pieces of paper. Tiny. It weighs a few ounces.
It is less than half an inch thick. You could
slip a million dollars into a standard mailing
envelope and tuck it into the inside pocket of
your suit jacket. The density of value was simply
too high. It became a massive vulnerability for
law enforcement. High denomination cash is the
ultimate bearer instrument. Whoever physically
holds the paper owns the wealth and it leaves
absolutely zero digital paper trail. Oh, they
had to go? Yeah. By eliminating these large bills,
the government fundamentally altered the logistics
of crime. They made it significantly harder,
heavier, and riskier for illicit operations to
move vast sums of physical wealth without detection.
So, in the summer of 1969, the Federal Reserve
doesn't just discontinue them on paper. They
execute an active purge. A very aggressive one.
They essentially turn bank tellers into bounty
hunters for the Fed. The instruction was like,
whenever a citizen or a business deposits a large
bill, a 500, a 1 ,000, a 5 ,000, or a 10 ,000,
do not hand it back out. Intercept it. send it
straight back to the Federal Reserve, where it
will be aggressively destroyed, usually by punching
holes in it and incinerating it. Gone forever.
Because the Fed was so ruthlessly hunting these
things down, you have to wonder, did any of these
paper giants actually survive the fire? They
did, but in astonishingly low numbers. We have
concrete data on the survivors. As of May 2009,
the known survival numbers were incredibly small.
How small? There were exactly 336 known $10 ,000
bills left in existence. Those are the iconic
notes featuring the portrait of Salmon P. Chase,
who served as Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury.
Just 336 of them left in the entire world. Yes,
and for the $5 ,000 bills, which feature President
James Madison, there were only 342 known to exist.
Now, there are more of the smaller high denominations
out there. About 165 ,000 of the $1 ,000 bills
and fewer than 75 ,000 of the $500 bills managed
to avoid the incinerators out of the hundreds
of thousands printed. Which raises the question,
who was holding on to a $10 ,000 bill in 1969
instead of cashing it in? I mean, it had to be
wealthy individuals hoarding them in private
safes or people who simply forgot they had them
locked away in a safe deposit box for decades.
That accounts for almost all the survivors. And
because they are so phenomenally rare today,
the numismatic market, the collector's market,
is entirely divorced from their printed value.
Oh, I bet. You cannot simply buy a surviving
$10 ,000 bill for $10 ,000. Collectors pay massive
premiums, often hundreds of thousands of dollars
to acquire them. They have transitioned from
currency into pure historical artifacts. They
really are museum pieces now. Though, looking
through the research, for a long time, the most
famous public display of this kind of wealth
wasn't in a museum at all. It was in a casino
in Las Vegas. Oh, yes. Binions. Right. Benny
Binion, who ran Binion's Horseshoe Casino, came
up with this brilliant marketing gimmick. He
created a display featuring exactly $110 ,000
bills. A literal million -dollar display. Right
out in the open. A million dollars, strictly
in $10 ,000 notes featuring Salmon P. Chase,
stacked and encased in thick acrylic. It was
a massive tourist attraction for decades. Anyone
could walk in off the street get their photo
taken and just stare at a million dollars compressed
into a hundred tiny slips of paper. This is an
amazing visual. But eventually even that iconic
display was dismantled and the individual bills
were sold off to private collectors. It serves
as the ultimate symbol of a bygone era of physical
wealth, which naturally leads to the modern status
of these bills. According to the U .S. Department
of the Treasury, their official administrative
stance today is resolute. They aren't bringing
them back. They assert that the current lineup
The $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills
perfectly and completely serves the needs of
the American public. They state very clearly
that neither the Treasury nor the Federal Reserve
has any plans whatsoever to change the denominations
in use today. That is the fixed position of the
banking authorities. But it's fascinating how
currency is still viewed as a powerful tool to
project national identity and make political
statements today. The research shows we are currently
seeing a political resurgence of the idea of
printing high denomination bills. We are. The
historical documentation notes that in June of
2024, Representative Paul Gosar introduced a
bill into Congress. The specific purpose of this
legislation was to legally mandate the Federal
Reserve to restart the issuance of the $500 bill.
Furthermore, the legislation proposed adopting
a new modernized design for this revived note,
which would feature former President Donald Trump
in its portrait. And that 2024 proposal wasn't
an isolated incident. Following that, in 2025,
another legislative bill was introduced in Congress.
This one proposed the creation and issuance of
a $250 note, which would be a completely unprecedented
denomination for modern U .S. currency, and this
proposed note would also feature Trump's portrait.
Now, I want to be extremely clear here for you
listening. We are taking absolutely no sides
on this. We are impartially reporting the legislative
proposals exactly as they appear in the source
material for this deep dive. We aren't endorsing
any political viewpoint, just conveying the historical
and current ideas around our currency. Absolutely.
And these contemporary legislative proposals
highlight a fascinating ongoing tension. What
kind of tension? Well, on one side you have the
Treasury and the Federal Reserve operating on
pure mechanics. They're arguing that digital
transaction networks and the current physical
cash lineup are entirely sufficient for the modern
economy. Right. It's just math to them. Exactly.
But on the other side, you have legislative efforts
attempting to utilize currency not just as a
medium of economic exchange, but as a prominent
cultural or political statement. It mirrors how
those 19th century notes utilized allegorical
figures or past leaders to project a specific
vision of national identity. It really brings
the whole story full circle. So. When we step
back and look at this entire historical arc,
from the desperate 1780 North Carolina $500 note,
to the heavily guarded $100 ,000 intergovernmental
trading cards, to the ruthless 1969 Fed purge,
all the way to modern congressional debates over
printing new faces on new denominations, What
does this all mean for the listener? If we connect
this grand history to the mechanics of your daily
life, the core takeaway is about recognizing
the invisible infrastructure of your wealth.
The invisible infrastructure. I like that. Think
about it. Every single time you tap your phone
at a coffee shop to pay or every time you send
a digital transfer to a friend to split a dinner
bill, you are actively participating in the exact
technological revolution that ultimately killed
the $10 ,000 bill. It's all connected. It is.
Physical cache, especially in massive amounts,
was simply outpaced by data. The friction of
moving paper, the severe security risks, the
physical weight, the slow speed of transport
was entirely eliminated by electronic systems.
We traded the tangible, beautiful, risky paper
giants of the past for the invisible frictionless
speed of the modern digital grid. It really forces
you to look at the standard $20 bill in your
wallet in a completely different light. It's
the resilient survivor of a much larger, much
wilder family tree of money. It definitely is.
But, you know, it also leaves us with a deeply
provocative final thought to chew on. We've spent
the last half century relentlessly entirely replacing
these massive physical bills with electronic
money systems. It makes sense. It's faster. It's
safer. And it keeps a million dollars out of
a smuggler's jacket pocket. Absolutely. But if
those digital grids were ever to suffer a catastrophic
failure or a massive prolonged cyber attack,
our digital wealth becomes instantly inaccessible.
A scary thought. Very. Without those large -denomination
physical notes circulating as a tangible backup,
how would our society actually manage to transfer
significant wealth or keep the massive gears
of the economy turning in a total digital blackout?
The paper giants are gone, and we've put all
our faith in the invisible data. Let's hope the
power stays on.