The new 10,000 krónur bank note which started circulating on Thursday is too big to fit in most regular wallets, RÚV reports. The new bank note is 16.2 cm long—seven millimetres longer than the 5,000 krónur bank note, which was previously Iceland’s largest unit of currency.
While it could be assumed that the new bill’s awkward sizing stems from oversight, the Central Bank says that it was purposefully designed this way. An announcement on their website explains that the 10,000 krónur bill was deliberately made longer so it would be easily distinguishable from the 5,000 krónur note.
Worse than any wallet crumpling problems may be the fact of the 10,000 krónur note being printed at all. While presenting the first 10,000 krónur bank note to Minister of Finance Bjarni Benediktsson, Central Bank manager Már Guðmundsson stated that the publication of a new, larger bank note is indeed “bad news, as it is a sign of too much inflation.”
The new 10,000 krónur note sports an illustration of one of Iceland’s most beloved poets, Jónas Hallgrímsson. You can watch a video of its first distribution—soundtracked to “Money,” by The Beatles, appropriately enough— on Mbl.is.
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