The Elimination Of High-Denomination Bills

PacoMartin,

Awesome posts (I made a point of reading several of the other ones you wrote). And I would love to respond to all of them at once but I would end up with a book length entry.

I have not met many people who have explored the BIS website in depth. As I imagine you have found there is a lot of incredible information available. In fact that is exactly where the percentage range I gave came from. To remain topical and for brevities sake I simply did a broad average of the top group.

I will keep this post brief as I am quite sleepy at the moment but I just had to touch upon a few items you mentioned and that I have been thinking about.

- Paper Checks and Checking Accounts. I think you are 110% spot on. Checks are negotiable instruments and they possess some unique characteristics related to endorsing, and transference of ownership. Some of these characteristics are close to ideal for facilitating some nefarious purposes. Obfuscation is one and creative accounting another the nature of checks make an accurate monthly account reconciliation (nearly) impossible for example. Another aspect that I think is interesting is that seemingly the bank is taking a big risk with their money i.e. the bank's own capital.

- I like all the info you provided in regards to issuance and denominations for various countries over an extended timeline (specifically the time period you covered). A lot can be gleaned I think by asking "why?" there was a change or in a trend etc. Then of course trying to discover the answer. Purposeful devaluation, changes in banking regulation, adoption and standardization of new technologies (SWIFT).

- Excellent info on the BIS site related to non-financial institution payment processors, money transmitters, etc.

- Only very recently (I wish I had did it much earlier) I began to delve into the law as related to legal tender. There are excellent papers being produced and active ongoing dialogue about this topic which is garnering a lot of new and growing interest. Richard Sylla and Dror Goldberg are but two authors I recommend checking out.

- Learning more about the topic directly above gave me a much better understanding and increased insight into the world of countries' legal tender held outside of said countries. The legal status of the legal tender I have found acts as a control mechanism or governor of nefarious usage, and this includes the issuer as well. It would be a tad naïve to exclude possible nefarious usage by the issuer from the debate/discussion.

Excellent links you posted as well. Check out JP Morgan's website for the latest on what they are up to in regards to crypto. Also check out what Iran has been up to over the last 3-6 years with crypto.

Thank you again for all the wonderful info you posted. I learned alot.

I put some data from the BIS website into a wikipedia entry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashl...(historical)

One topic of interest was over a 40 year period (1978-2018) which country has increased it's cash in circulation at the fastest rate. The BIS in 1978 only tracked the US + 10 countries (5 of which are part of the Euro Area today). Belgium was a high cash country in 1978 so the percentage increase is lower than the other Euro Area countries.

6.46% United States
6.28% Japan
6.11% Italy - Euro Area
4.98% France - Euro Area
4.68% Germany - Euro Area
4.68% Netherlands - Euro Area
4.59% Canada
4.15% Switzerland
3.74% United Kingdom
3.14% Belgium - Euro Area
-0.31% Sweden

These percentage increases are after converting to the USD. A country with a rapidly depreciating currency would show a much higher rate of increase relative to it's own currency. The rate of increase of the Mexican peso from the 1970s until today would be phenomenally high if measured in pesos. In 1993 the currency was redenominated to remove three zeros.

Sweden's conversion to a low cash society may be the future of similar countries like Bahamas, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand and possibly UK, Canada, and Australia. It is not clear if Japan, US or the Euro Area would tolerate becoming a low cash society.

Bahamian dollars are pegged at parity with the USD,(BD$1=US$1). At the end of 2019 Bahamian banknotes were circulating at $1150 per person, but with a large number of $1 bills. The Bahamian government might find it is more cost effective to simply replace all their banknotes with digital currency as there are still a sufficient stock of US banknotes supplied by tourists circulating in the country to meet cash demand.