I mean, the 100 USD bill is NOT the highest valued bill in the world, that belongs to the former B$10000 bill (withdrawn) from Brunei (I’m serious, this exists) which is worth $7874 and yes it’s a single bill, also converting to around £5803 & 6677€ respectively. Like why does this bill even exist when it’s hard to encounter, given that Brunei is a petro-state, it comes as no surprise.
The second highest valued bill is Fr. 1000 ($1278) or £942 & 1084€ which isn’t a surprise for Switzerland to have that due to how expensive it is over there. But, it’s difficult to obtain even in Switzerland and has advanced security features making hard to counterfeit due to its high value (x12 times of $100) but they sell stuff that’s over Fr. 1000 anyway so it makes sense for them to have that.
The reason why they are barely featured in crime movies or mentioned in real crimes relating to counterfeit money is because of their obscurity and the fact that they don’t know both exist (but it does, although either really hard to get your hands on it or ceases to circulate) however still retains their face value. The Swiss Franc is deemed a “safe haven” currency while the US Dollar isn’t.
It’s compact, but difficult to spend. The cashier isn’t gonna be able to make change for that, which is a huge part of counterfeiting. If you deposit a bunch of fake money at the bank, you’ll get caught. But if you buy something cheap with a fake $100 or $20, the change from the register launders that money for you and you can deposit the real cash and say you made it selling knicknacks at a craft fair or some bullshit.
$100s and $20s are popular because they’re valuable enough to be worth the effort to duplicate while still being easy to use.
To put into perspective: there’s Beluga (a type of caviar) in Switzerland that costs Fr. 1000 or over 1.2k USD, so a Fr. 1000 bill will be accepted at luxury or high end stores.
I’ve seen a video where a German woman wanted to buy flowers with that bill but was told they don’t have enough change to hand back hence why they politely refused despite the fact this bill exists and is legal tender.
A luxury or high end store is going to be doing meticulous record keeping that would make it easy to find whoever used that rare bill.
A $20 or even $100 handed to a random clerk is likely to be mixed in with the others of the same denominations at the store.
The other thing is that if you have access to a store or business that normally pays cash you can use a bunch of counterfeit bills and keep the real cash. It isn’t only individuals making purchases at stores.
Yeah, I worked at a US gas station when I was younger and most $100s were real and going towards cigarettes by the carton