Cash Money

A 500 Euro banknote has dimensions of 160 mm x 82 mm x .16 mm, and hence occupies a volume of 2100 mm^3 or 2.1 X 10^-6 m^3. There are roughly 590 million 500 Euro notes in circulation, so their total volume comes to something like 1240 m^3, which means that with optimum packing you might get them all in eleven semi-trailers - or 60,000 carry on luggage cases.

There are a lot more 100 dollar bills - roughly ten billion, or slightly less than one and one half for every living person.

I know somebody else has got mine.

UPDATE: It's widely understood that these vast numbers of large bills are used almost exclusively by criminal enterprises, so why should governments enable them in this way? I think I know, but I'd like to hear alternative views.

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