I remember reading an article from Australia where a woman requested to withdraw a five figure sum (over 20k) in cash from her own bank account but they’re like “sorry, we can’t do that” making excuses on the way of “need proof on how you acquired such money”, even though she provided all the evidence, they still refused anyway. She was like “WTF? It’s my own money!” so there’s a possibility that banks dictate how much one can withdraw.
I mean, more of a friends of friends or room mate (not a complete stranger). Like the memes equivalent to “kid uses mom’s CC to spend on fortnite skins” but it’s more on your own circle, withdrawing large sums is too obvious. So, an individual will only make their own family members or friends withdraw small amounts at a time at separate intervals (every few months).
The withdrawal can be done by using another person’s card (instead of your own) making it look like they did the transaction (think of skimming devices implanted onto ATMs that are compromised). However it’s a grey area.
There are individuals who “copy existing bills exchanging those for legitimate ones with different serial numbers” (counterfeit) and that actually happens, like for example: North Korea is infamous for producing convincing clones of US$100 bills that look believeable.
I’ve heard cases regarding civil asset forfeiture with citizens traveling domestically having large amounts still got it confiscated by DEA agents due to suspicion of criminal activity. So in knowing that, will they still seize non-USD currency: 30,000,000 Rials (~$78,125,000) in cash even though it’s being withdrawn from an Omani bank and it’s the individual’s own money just carried out in multiple stacks.
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.
Have you ever read subtitles (日本語字幕) without pausing? Whenever I watch a non-Japanese movie, I just enable JP subs and you need a very good grasp on reading Kanji in real time since you’re reading translated dialog, and sometimes you can notice translation mistakes if you know where to look based on visual context within the scene. For Japanese movies: I sometimes enable closed captions to understand clearly what they’re saying.
That’s where cash serves a purpose, as a payment method during that kind of scenario.