Originally Posted by
gfunkdave
I happen to be partial to the $50, probably because they seem rarer than the $100. Though the $100 is certainly more useful if you just want cash for an emergency. I've never encountered a place that refused to break a $100 (unless they didn't have enough cash in the till yet...I had to refuse one when I worked at a bookstore in high school and someone wanted me to break a $100 first thing in the morning), and often overseas a crisp $100 bill is the only denomination they'll take.
I think they discontinued the 500 euro note because they found most of them being used were being used by drug dealers and other criminals.
The last of the central banks in the Eurozone stopped printing the 500 euro notes in perhaps 2014, but the 500 euro notes are still circulating and valid for payments. In 2014, they printed over 8 million of the 500 euro notes. They stopped printing them because it was such a big store of value that people -- criminals and otherwise -- were taking them out of routine use and using them nearly exclusively as a store of value since interest rates on current account deposits weren't encouraging their deposit back at banks. Also, the OECD/FATF didn't like that the value was so high that transport of smuggled cash across borders was harder to stop than usual.