Zimbabwe once printed a 100-trillion-dollar banknote

When inflation runs wild, money loses value faster than it can be spent. Zimbabwe lived through one of history’s worst cases. In mid-November 2008 its inflation rate is estimated to have peaked at about 79.6 billion percent per month — prices roughly doubling every 24 hours.

Daily life warped around the numbers. Workers were paid daily, sometimes twice a day, and rushed to spend before the cash evaporated; a price quoted at the start of a shopping trip could rise before you reached the till. The local currency was abandoned in practice long before it was abandoned in law, as people turned to barter and to black markets trading in US dollars and South African rand.

The roots were political. The Reserve Bank printed money to cover war debts and government salaries, while the seizure of commercial farms gutted agricultural output and the tax base. As trust collapsed, the velocity of money spiraled — everyone spent instantly, which only drove prices higher in a self-feeding loop.

The Reserve Bank chased the spiral with ever-larger notes, repeatedly lopping zeros off the currency in failed redenominations. In January 2009 it issued a 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) Zimbabwe dollar note, among the largest denominations in world history — worth only about US$30 on its first day.

One of the largest denominations of currency in world history — yet it couldn’t cover a loaf of bread for long.

Later that year Zimbabwe formally dollarized, abandoning its currency for foreign money. The defunct notes found an afterlife as tourist souvenirs, sold online and abroad — including one in the Smithsonian — as monuments to what happens when trust in a currency collapses.