All the other denominations over $1 have gone “Bigfaced” and been colored other than green. Why not the one-dollar bill?
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It doesn’t make economical sense to counterfeit $1 bills. The main way counterfeiters make their money is by exchanging the counterfeit money for real money. Counterfeit money is a hot potato, once you make it, it’s a liability (evidence of a serious crime) and you have to get rid of it.
The book The Art of Making Money, which was a biography of a very successful counterfeiter, illustrated there’s two ways to profit off of counterfeit money. Trafficking it wholesale, which requires very dangerous organized crime connections (or perhaps state sponsored ones). That will net you at best 30-40 cents on the dollar amount, which is for the highest quality. Most likely that won’t be the avenue taken.
The second one is using it in a cash transaction and getting change. That generally requires one bill used at a time and distracting the cashier for good measure, then finding other places because they’ll find out it’s counterfeit when they deposit it.
For either case, the investment of time and resources is a net loss for $1 bills. Interesting fact I also read: counterfeit $20s go right to the top priority of the secret service. $20 bills are one of the most highly used and easily passed when counterfeit because of that. People pay much more attention to $50s and $100s.
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