100 Dollars Federal Reserve Note, large portrait

The 1996 redesign was the first major overhaul of U.S. currency since the 1920s, driven almost entirely by the scale of counterfeiting operations — particularly the "superdollar," a near-perfect forgery believed to have originated in Iran or North Korea that had been circulating since the late 1980s. The enlarged portrait, color-shifting ink in the numeral, and embedded security thread were a direct response to that specific threat, not cosmetic modernization.

Roughly two-thirds of all U.S. currency in circulation at any given time during this series existed outside the United States — the hundred was, and remains, the preferred large-denomination store of value in dollarized economies from Ecuador to Cambodia.