> According to that same article, the reason for retiring the note was because the people who benefited the most from its existence are criminals, who need to do their business in cash -- the fewer notes, the easier for them.

This is what they want the citizens to believe.

In 2016 India did the infamous demonetization claiming that the ₹500 notes were used in hoarding black money and funding terrorism.

It ended up massively shocking the unorganised economy, and the nation is still recovering from it. The main reasons the government stated while doing it are still going on. The entire exercise didn't solve any problems.

I don't have any actual knowledge of the effects of this in India.

However, I think that when a member of the general public makes sweeping statements like "the entire exercise didn't solve any problems" it's only flaunting prejudices. If you work at a job related to infrastructure, the details would be incredibly boring to the public, and certainly aren't shared. But you could see something was double or half the year before, and it would mean infinitely more than a million people parroting what everyone always says because they always think the same thing.

I wonder if we are meant to think of drug dealers but the governments are just as worried about the local handyman or small construction company getting untraceable cash payments without paying taxes.

They aren't getting enough €50 or $100 notes to be a real logistical problem. You can put 10k in your pocket, and count it in a minute or two.

If you have large piles of money to launder, one way is to build a rental property and pay all the materials/contractors in cash.

But now harder to do that with 5x the bills. Or suddenly stuck with 500s that nobody wants to take.

Wait... how do you explain the appearance of the building with no expenses shown except "from cash"?

At least in Canada, the city cares about building permits, but doesn’t do any checking on how the building/construction was paid for.

Banks don’t really question rent cheque’s coming in every month, or a large bank transfer coming from your lawyer for the sale of property.

There are expenses, they're just not the right expenses.

This is why so many taxi drivers say their "credit card reader is broken"

> Actually using them to buy things is a pain, since most businesses won't accept them.

For me it always went smoothly when buying something that exceeded the value of the high note. Your experience may differ if you buy a roll in the bakery.

It also depends on the country. I had family hand me a 500 Euro note because they couldn't even get get it changed at banks in France.

I took it on my trip to Austria a week later and got it changed at the post office.

Spent them at an FNAC when buying a TV. They called up the bag-checking security guard at the front to check it.

Didn’t think they would know any better than the cashiers...

The same people who benefit from encryption if govts are to be believed. If cash keeps being as unwieldy as it has become, a $100 note today is worth about what a $10 note was worth in 1920, people will just stop using govt back cash and use gold or art instead. Monero looks like it's the first large scale crypto to get inflation and anonymity at least partly right.

> According to that same article, the reason for retiring the note was because the people who benefited the most from its existence are criminals, who need to do their business in cash -- the fewer notes, the easier for them. That includes storage, I guess.

And then, they tell bitcoiners they are crazy for denouncing the overreach of central banks.

Interesting, I don't see any mention retiring the note because of criminal use or anything about the 500 note at all. Is Bloomberb A/B testing the content of articles now? Would not be surprised, but it would be a disturbing trend.

Commenter was referring to the Wikipedia article, their wording was a little confusing though.

I've been in the eurozone since it started.. only ever saw 500 euro bills being exchanged in casinos.

I exchanged cash in Canada before heading to EU for 10 weeks and the kiosk gave me all EUR500 notes and said it was all they had.

Russian mafia has to liquidate somehow.

Ya, it’s a real mess, especially if you can’t break/spend them all.

At least I learned that France has several central banks.

You’re kinda SOL if you go to a euroized non-EU country (Montenegro or Kosovo).

And yet across the border, I've been given a CHF1000 note cashing a deposit slip in a post office.