It is an infringement of liberty to restrict use of cash amongst the working population.

When governments print banknotes, they can sell them and get money to do things at face value, instead of having to get loans and issue bonds where they'd have to pay interest or charging taxes where their citizens would object. In fact, in countries like the EU, UK and USA, despite normal people and normal companies using cash less and less, for the past couple of decades, the amount of cash printed has increased rapidly because as long as people buy it, there's a big incentive for governments to print it. Bigger face value notes mean more money for less printing, so are the best thing to issue, as long as people are buying them.

That leaves a big question of who on earth is buying more banknotes each year than the last. The obvious thing that can be best done by banknotes is storing a large value in a small space with the ability to be moved around without traceability or counterfeiting, which really only matters to money launderers. Things like bank transfers and cryptocurrencies can be traced as long as someone knows who owned the money at some point, but if you buy your bitcoin with cash from someone who doesn't keep records of who gave them the cash, then your crypto wallet is totally opaque to the authorities.

The people involved range from minor things like spouses hiding money in a divorce to tax dodgers to drug dealers to people traffickers to sanctioned governments, and when that's all added up and funneled through opaquely-owned shell companies so it doesn't look like it's Russia or Iran's money buying the cash, there's enough demand for governments to justify building new money printing facilities and issuing higher denomination banknotes.

If you want to learn more, there's quite a lot more detail in Everybody Loves Our Dollars by Oliver Bullough.

Corruption.

Even if you don't personally use them for day-to-day transactions, there is still a need for large denominations for large transactions. Appliances, cars, etc, anything you might be buying private party from Facebook marketplace/for sale ads that will cost a lot and carrying a high quantity of lower denominations would be impractical.

Because other countries handle that differently than the Netherlands?

e.g. In Austria a not insignificant part of people exclusively do transactions in cash (think of that what you will). There even was a push to anchor cash payment is the constitution, so removing 100/200€ notes is not even on the table

USA used to have $10,000 notes back in the mid 1900s that would have been mostly used for bank transfers and the like.

A lot of places keep a special marker or light to check for fakes on larger bills but they're not unused. Was in a hardware store a couple weeks back and some older couple paid an some appliance over $1000 in all hundreds.

For me, $100 and up aren't very useful. Some stores in Canada want to see photo ID in order to spend larger denominations.

Have you heard about drugs?

We were required to do our initial deposit for a bank account in Germany in cash. Not entirely sure why, but we're immigrants and so we couldn't easily do international transfers yet, nor did we have an in-country account to work with. Having larger denominations for a two month rent security account was very reasonable.

Do we do lots with cash? YES. We have children and they use cash to buy things. Do I use it? Yes. For everything? No. It's about 80% digital, 20% cash. Should I use digital to buy a 1 euro pastry at a train station? No. Why pay the overhead to the bank? Don't bother. Cash works fine. Digital works fine. Have both.

Business transactions. Think of small business that deal with cash, or paying contractors, etc.

There's many reasons larger bills still exist, even just larger cash transactions like buying a second hand car gives a reason for larger bills to continue to exist.

I only saw a €500 note once. Still remember it to this day.
Shoutout grandma, shoutout old people for still having crazy amounts of cash

Crimes, banking, stuff like that.

I use 100 and 200 €/CHF notes all the time to buy weed.

Well first of all it's just easier storage for mid-high amounts of cash. It'll take almost double the volume to keep the same amount in 50's and takes twice as long to count so if someone does pay for something expensive in cash, 100's are a lot more practical.

The other aspect I wouldn't neglect is inflation. Today's 50s will be 100s in a few decades so those bills will become a lot more relevant.

In Denmark we phased out the DKK 1000 bill (~ €130) and it is no longer legal tender. The fact that the eurozone still has €100 and above seems crazy to me. At least in Denmark it was determined that the 1000 DKK mostly was used by gangs and for money laundering.

They are mostly used by money laundering and tax evasion transactions.

While we are on the subject, who the hell uses any cash for normal transactions?

Mostly for shady stuff that keeps business off the books. The only time I saw a 500€ note was dude paying groceries at Lidl.

Rich fucks