Why the United States stopped printing bills worth more than one hundred dollars
In short: For decades, the United States Treasury issued banknotes in denominations as high as one hundred thousand dollars. Today, these massive bills are legal tender but have been effectively removed from public circulation. Discover why these relics of high-stakes finance were discontinued and why they remain highly prized by collectors.
Large-denomination banknotes, defined as those with a face value of five hundred dollars or more, have a history in the United States dating back to the late eighteenth century. North Carolina authorized the first five hundred dollar note in May 1780, with Virginia following shortly after. Throughout the nineteenth century, these high-value notes were used for significant financial transactions, particularly by banks and the federal government. By the time of the American Civil War, federal banknotes included interest-bearing notes as large as five thousand dollars.
The landscape of American currency shifted dramatically in the twentieth century. Following the repeal of the gold standard and the compulsory confiscation of personal gold under Executive Order 6102 in March 1933, the government issued series 1934 gold certificates in denominations up to one hundred thousand dollars. However, these were restricted to intragovernmental transfers between Federal Reserve Banks and were never released to the public. By December 27, 1945, the production of all high-denomination bills ceased, and they were officially discontinued in July 1969 due to a lack of public use.
Today, the Federal Reserve actively removes these bills from circulation whenever they are returned by banks. Because so few remain—as of May 2009, only 336 ten-thousand-dollar bills were known to exist—they are now rare collector items that trade well above their face value. While recent legislative efforts in 2024 and 2025 have proposed reintroducing five-hundred and two-hundred-fifty-dollar notes, the Department of the Treasury maintains that current denominations sufficiently meet the public's needs, citing concerns over counterfeiting and the use of cash in illicit activities like money laundering.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Large denominations of United States currency
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