The largest Chinese bill is the 100 yuan note, worth approximately $17 USD. Does any country have a largest banknote that is worth less than this?
In 2009, Zimbabwe had a $100 trillion dollar bill that was worth about $5 American. At that point they pretty much abandoned their own currency.
It’s quite easy to find examples of this when hyperinflation occurs.
Of course, the all time winner;
- Hungary
The worst inflation ever in the world, trough the end of 1945 until July 1946. In the middle of 1946, the highest denomination ever was issued, it was 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 Pengő (a hundred quintillion pengő). Even more ! ten times higher denomination from above had printed but not issued. It was 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or a sextillion Pengő or one milliard billion Pengő
Rather atrociously written, from here: http://www.moneygolddiamond.com/2010/01/world-top-denomination-currency.html
OP, I suggest you take a look at the poorest countries of the world:
You can then look up each of their currencies in Wikipedia, for example Burundi:
which tell you the largest banknote is the 10,000 Burundian Franc
Looking up the exchange rate you notice
$1USD=1546 Burundian Francs
or roughly $6.47 for this largest note.
I…think you’re both misreading the OP. They’re not asking which country has the highest denomination; they’re asking which currency has the lowest number as it’s highest denomination.
i.e. Elbonia’s currency, the Eyecrud (“₡”), is worth the same as a US dollar, but the currency only has ₡1, ₡5, ₡10, and ₡60 notes.
Actually there’s a bit of a mismatch between the thread title and the contents of the OP.
This matches your interpretation.
This matches the interpretation in the other replies.
Edited to add: Perhaps the title should have been “What country has the lowest [value in $US] highest denomination bill?”
I don’t get out much anymore, but noticed some smallish largests three decades ago:
When I visited South Korea in 1978, 10000-won government-issued notes were in use ($17) but 100,000-won notes with a completely different texture (and less “official looking”) issued by private banks were used for large sums. Would the latter count?
I visited the Phillipines in the mid-1980’s, changed a largish sum, and was paid in 100-peso notes worth $5 each. Wikipedia implies that this was indeed the largest demonination at that time. (Presumably, like South Korea, there were larger private-bank notes?)
I can’t remember what the exchange rate was, but when I was in Laos in 2001, the largest bill generally available was worth around a dollar. There was one ATM in the country, I think so I got about $200 worth. 200 bills is a friggen’ stack. Those guys made counting cash an art form. They held the bills folded lengthwise with the corners pinched and could riff through those suckers like a bank bill counting machine.
Jordanian Dinar has no bill larger than 50, worth about 70 USD. Fifty might qualify as the “lowest highest denomination”.
No, wait, the Bahraini Dinar goes only up to the 20, as the largest bill in circulation… It’s worth about USD-50.