It finally happened: 500 euro notes will no longer be produced

... To be clear, 500 euro notes are not ‘banned'. The ECB tells us that current 500 euro notes in circulation will still be honored as legal tender... The next step for them would be to quietly take these bills out of circulation until one day there's simply no more of them available. Then they can rinse and repeat with the 200 and 100 euro notes. All of this is tantamount to capital controls-- a way for central banks to trap your savings inside a worthless financial system.