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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

It's also the #1 use case for $100 US dollar bills. Most US $100 bills, in fact, are not even in the US.[a][b]

US $100 bills are the currency of choice for small-time crooks and evildoers around the world.

They are also the currency of choice for big-time crooks and evildoers. Briefcases of US $100 bills have long been used for illicit payments, as depicted in numerous books and movies.

Just because crooks and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too.

What Binance did was wrong, no doubt, but Binance ≠ crypto.

[a] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/oct/innocent-...

[b] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/12/177051690/most...

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There's a major distinction, however, in that it's a heck of a lot harder to safely and reliably lug briefcases or suitcases full of $100 bills from Chicago to Tehran, than it is to click and transfer some Bitcoin. Which is the whole point.

Yeah, crypto is a safer, more reliable alternative for many use cases, including those that are fundamentally honest. For instance, if you're an honest person trapped as a citizen in a despotic authoritarian state that doesn't respect your property rights, crypto may be the safest, most reliable alternative for storing and transferring your hard-earned savings.

Ironically, crypto has developed something significantly better for these use cases called stablecoin, which isn't really decentralized.

A currency peg is a double-edged sword in and of itself, to say nothing of the risk brought into the equation by having to trust a stablecoin issuer.

Yes, mostly they are distributed via pallets out the back of C130s

(Definitely in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't know if there's any back channel deals at the moment paying off Iranians in 100$ bills but I wouldn't be surprised if we were nudging for regime change by funding revolutionaries)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's limited exclusively to countries the US is currently invading...

That cash keeps circulating among global black markets after any given invasion.

Which has nothing whatsoever to do with sending money from Chicago to Iran.

The topic here is sending money across sanctioned borders, not local circulation.

It's not hard even for Iran to trade gold and oil in USD.

> The Wall Street Journal reported, saying the hidden conduit enabled Tehran to receive up to $8.4 billion last year.

[1]: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202510060867

> Just because criminals and evildoers use US $100 bills doesn't mean they are not useful and valuable to honest people too.

Like all of the ATMs near a dispensary that was always out of cash because 20 individual $20 bills runs out a lot faster than 4 $100 bills. Until dispensaries became legal, it was rare for me to see an ATM with anything other than $20s. Now, I see $20, $50, $100 dispensing machines regularly.

> Now, I see $20, $50, $100 dispensing machines regularly.

There's also been a lot of inflation.

If you held a $50 bill in 1997, or a $20 bill in 1978, then you held a note worth more than a $100 bill today.

I knew someone who ran an exchange house (like the kind you find in airports)

He said that euros are very popular because there are 500 euro bills.

I guess they stopped making them.

A briefcase of $100 notes is just around 1 million. That's like a tip you give to a waiter these days in the world of crypto.

At the scale of cryptocrime, you'd be looking at trucks filled with $100 notes.

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