50 000 Australes

The 50,000 australes note exists because Argentina's monetary situation in the late 1980s was genuinely catastrophic. Annual inflation peaked at around 3,000% in 1989 — the year this note was introduced — forcing the Casa de Moneda to keep printing larger denominations just to keep pace with collapsing purchasing power. The austral itself had been introduced in 1985 specifically to replace the discredited peso, at a rate of 1,000 pesos per austral. It lasted less than a decade before being replaced in turn by the peso convertible in 1992.

Notes from the upper end of the austral series often show heavy circulation wear, a direct consequence of high-velocity spending during hyperinflationary episodes.