185 Fun Facts About Currency

Which symbol sits at the top of the pyramid on the back of the US one-dollar bill?

An eye, the Eye of Providence, floats above a pyramid of 13 steps, one for each original state. It began as a Christian symbol of a watchful God; Freemasons adopted it only after the seal was designed in 1782.

Sterling, the money of the United Kingdom, holds which record?

Oldest still in continuous use: sterling goes back to Anglo-Saxon silver pennies, 240 of which were meant to weigh a pound of silver, which is how a unit of weight became a unit of money.

Since 1971 the pound has been divided into how many pence?

100 pence replaced the old 240 on Decimal Day, 15 February 1971. The switch was years in the making: the first decimal coins had been in circulation since 1968.

Which of these countries swapped its national cash for euro notes and coins on 1 January 2002?

Portugal was one of twelve countries that changed their cash together, on a scale never tried before. The euro itself was already three years old, but until then it had existed only as 'book money'.

Currency traders call the pound-to-dollar exchange rate by which nickname, after the transatlantic line that once carried it?

Cable recalls the telegraph line laid under the Atlantic in 1866, which carried sterling prices between London and New York; traders kept the nickname long after fibre optics replaced it.

The euro sign € is based on which Greek letter?

Epsilon echoes the first letter of 'Europe', the EU says, and the two parallel lines drawn through it stand for the stability of the currency.

In 2026, which currency had the highest value per unit in the world?

The Kuwaiti dinar buys more than three US dollars, ahead of the Bahraini dinar at about $2.65. Iraqi troops looted its banknotes in the 1990 invasion, so Kuwait voided the series and issued a new one.

The Swiss franc is legal tender in Switzerland and which other country?

Liechtenstein used the Austrian krone until that currency collapsed after the First World War, then switched to the Swiss franc and tied its customs and its money to Switzerland.

India's rupee sign ₹, adopted in 2010, blends a Latin capital R with a letter from which script?

Devanagari supplies the letter 'ra'; the two strokes across the top are meant to recall India's tricolour flag and an equals sign. Designer D. Udaya Kumar's entry beat more than 3,000 others.

Which US agency was founded in 1865 to stamp out counterfeit money?

The Secret Service began inside the Treasury, when nearly a third of the money in circulation was fake; it took on guarding presidents only after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.

Which bird appears on the reverse of Canada's one-dollar coin?

The common loon gave the coin its nickname, the loonie, almost at once. The coin arrived in 1987 as a cost-saving swap for the dollar bill, and its two-dollar successor duly became the 'toonie'.

Modern polymer banknotes were first issued as currency in which country, in 1988?

Australia issued the first polymer note, a $10 marking its 1988 bicentenary, developed by the Reserve Bank with the CSIRO; plastic lasts longer than paper and is much harder to counterfeit.

Which British coin, introduced in 1969, was the world's first with seven sides?

The 50p is an equilateral-curve heptagon: its constant width lets it roll through vending machines like a round coin, yet it is easy to tell from other coins by sight and by feel.

In Australia's 1966 switch to decimal money, one new dollar replaced ten of which old unit?

Shillings: ten made a dollar, so each old pound became two. A cartoon character called Dollar Bill fronted the publicity campaign that taught Australians the new sums.

Which building appears on the reverse of the US five-cent coin?

Monticello was Thomas Jefferson's own design for his Virginia home; on the nickel, competition winner Felix Schlag was made to submit an entirely new drawing of it before the coin went into production in 1938.

US paper money earned the nickname 'greenbacks' during which war?

The Civil War pushed the Union to issue Demand Notes in 1861 to pay its bills; their green-inked backs gave the nickname, and like every US note since they are still legally worth face value.

The Spanish dollar had eight reales, so what nickname does a US quarter carry?

A 'bit' was one real, an eighth of a Spanish dollar, so a quarter dollar was two bits, a phrase kept alive by 'shave and a haircut, two bits'.

The dollar sign $ is thought to have grown out of a handwritten abbreviation for which currency?

Pesos were written 'ps' in ledgers; in manuscripts of the late 1700s the s creeps over the p until the pair looks like $, which is the most widely accepted of several theories.

Whose portrait is on the US $100 bill?

Benjamin Franklin never served as president, but he knew paper money first-hand: his print shop produced notes for the colonies, using anti-counterfeiting tricks he had devised himself.

Since July 1969, what has been the largest US bill still being issued?

The $100 became the top note when the Fed and Treasury dropped the $500 to $10,000 bills for lack of use; none had been printed since 1945, and the survivors are still legal tender.

Which president appears on the US $2 bill?

Thomas Jefferson's note is still issued by the Federal Reserve as one of its current denominations, yet many people assume it was withdrawn years ago.

Why did the US Treasury stop printing the $2 bill in 1966?

Low demand, the Treasury said. Ten years later it revived the note, reckoning that one $2 bill could do the work of two singles.

'In God We Trust' first appeared in 1864 on which short-lived US coin?

The two-cent piece got the motto after a Pennsylvania minister wrote to the Treasury in 1861 asking that Union coins recognise God; the coin itself lasted only until 1873.

'In God We Trust' first appeared on a US bill in 1957. Which one?

Congress had made the phrase the national motto the year before.

Why does a US $100 bill last over three times as long as a $1 bill?

It is saved, not spent: the Federal Reserve says hundreds are often held as a store of value and change hands rarely, so one lasts over twenty years against about seven for a hard-worked single.

US banknotes marked with a small 'FW' were printed in which city?

Fort Worth has printed US currency since December 1990, at a second plant built as a backup to Washington and to shorten the haul to the western Federal Reserve Banks.

Which cryptocurrency was launched in 2013 as a joke about the hype around digital coins?

Dogecoin borrowed its name and its dog mascot from an internet meme; the joke got out of hand, and in May 2021 the coins were briefly worth more than $85 billion.

US Federal Reserve Notes are printed on paper made mostly from what?

Cotton fibre makes up three-quarters of the paper and linen the rest; tiny red and blue threads are scattered through it at random to make the sheet harder to imitate.

Why did the US Mint switch the penny to a zinc core in 1982?

Copper had become too expensive for a one-cent coin, so the Mint switched to copper-plated zinc. Costs kept climbing anyway: by 2025 a penny cost 3.69 cents to make, and striking for circulation stopped.

What is the modern US five-cent coin made of?

75% copper, 25% nickel has been the recipe since 1866, with one break: from 1942 to 1945 nickel was a strategic war material, so 'war nickels' were struck in a silver alloy instead.

Which president has appeared on the US dime since 1946?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, himself a polio survivor, founded the foundation behind the March of Dimes, so after his death in 1945 the ten-cent piece was the obvious coin to carry his portrait.

Which American appeared on the 1979 dollar coin that was all too easily mistaken for a quarter?

Susan B. Anthony's dollar was so close to the quarter in size and metal that most of the coins ended up in vaults; when Congress ordered a successor, it required a golden colour and a distinctive edge.

The 'golden dollar' introduced in 2000 depicts whom?

Sacagawea left no portrait, so sculptor Glenna Goodacre modelled the Lewis and Clark guide on a young Shoshone-Bannock woman, Randy'L He-dow Teton.

Plans announced in 2016 would put Harriet Tubman on the front of which US bill?

The $20: the Treasury had said in 2015 that a woman would appear on the $10, then changed course, keeping that note's portrait and giving Tubman the front of the twenty.

The 'trillion-dollar coin' idea for dodging the US debt ceiling relies on a legal quirk about coins of which metal?

Platinum is the one metal the law leaves open: a clause on platinum bullion and proof coins lets the Treasury Secretary choose any denomination, while other coins have theirs fixed by statute.

Which ancient Anatolian kingdom is credited with striking the first coins, from electrum, in the 7th century BC?

Lydia's river Pactolus carried gold and silver mixed as natural electrum, the raw metal for its first coins; its last king, Croesus, famed for his wealth, later issued coins of pure gold.

Jiaozi, which appeared in Chengdu around the 11th century, are regarded as the world's first what?

Paper money began as a convenience: Sichuan's iron coins were so heavy that local merchants issued notes to stand in for them, and in 1023 the Song government took the system over.

Which shell was the most widely used form of shell money around the world?

Cowrie shells gathered in the Maldives travelled as money across Asia and Africa; the commonest species is still called the money cowrie, and Ghana's cedi is thought to take its name from an Akan word for the shell.

Giant limestone discs called rai stones served as money on which Micronesian island?

Yap's stones were quarried hundreds of miles away and were too heavy to move, so ownership passed by word of mouth; one that sank on the voyage home still counted as its owner's wealth.

What was Slovenia's currency before it adopted the euro in 2007?

The tolar arrived in October 1991, months after Slovenia declared independence, replacing Yugoslavia's currency one for one; in 2007 Slovenia became the first of the 2004 EU entrants to adopt the euro.

By November 1923, one US dollar was worth roughly how many German marks?

The mark hit 4.2 trillion to the dollar in mid-November 1923; the Rentenmark, backed by mortgage bonds, then replaced it at one trillion paper marks to one.

The most extreme hyperinflation ever recorded destroyed which currency in 1946?

The Hungarian pengő collapsed so fast in July 1946 that prices doubled about every 15 hours; that August the forint replaced it at 400 octillion to one.

What was the highest face value of any banknote Zimbabwe issued before abandoning its dollar in 2009?

The Z$100 trillion note of early 2009 barely paid for a loaf of bread, and the currency was dropped that April; collectors have since paid far more for the notes than they were ever worth as money.

Which US president ended the dollar's convertibility into gold in August 1971?

Richard Nixon announced it in an evening television address, with a 90-day freeze on wages and prices and a 10% surcharge on imports; the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates did not survive it.

Which scientist, as Master of the Royal Mint, overvalued gold in 1717 and tipped Britain onto a gold standard?

Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint from 1699, set the gold guinea's value too high against silver in 1717, so silver coin drained abroad and Britain drifted onto a gold standard.

Bitcoin's supply is capped at how many coins in total?

Bitcoin's protocol caps supply at 21 million coins; the mining reward halves every 210,000 blocks, so the last fraction should be issued around the year 2140.

Which country adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021, then revoked the status in 2025?

El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender in September 2021 under President Nayib Bukele, then dropped the status in early 2025 as part of a loan deal with the IMF, which had urged it to do so since 2022.

The EURion constellation is a pattern of small rings printed on banknotes to do what?

Stop photocopiers reproducing them: the rings have never been officially acknowledged; researcher Markus Kuhn found them in 2002 when a Xerox colour copier refused to copy a banknote, and named them after Orion.

The US government has accused which country of printing 'superdollars', near-perfect forgeries of its banknotes?

North Korea denies it, but investigators have traced at least $45 million of the notes, printed by the same intaglio method as real bills, to its agents passing them abroad.

Pig-shaped terracotta money boxes from the Majapahit era have been dug up at Trowulan on which Indonesian island?

Java's boxes were really boars: the Javanese word for them, cèlèngan, means 'likeness of a boar' and survives in Indonesian as the everyday word for a piggy bank and for savings.

Which UK institution has issued banknotes since 1694 and went fully polymer in 2021?

The Bank of England was set up in 1694 to raise £1.2 million for the government's war with France; it stayed in private hands until 1946, when it was nationalised.

By the end of 2024, which country's rial had sunk to roughly 800,000 to one US dollar?

Iran's rial hit a record low of about 820,000 to the dollar on the open market in the last days of 2024; Iranians then quoted prices in tomans of ten rials each, to knock a zero off.

Which currency is the second most traded in the world after the US dollar?

The euro took about 31 percent of global foreign-exchange turnover in the BIS 2022 survey, second only to the dollar, and is also the second-largest reserve currency.

Which country became the eurozone's 20th member in 2023, giving up a currency called the kuna?

Croatia's kuna was named after the marten, whose pelts once served as payment there; Bulgaria followed in 2026 to make the eurozone 21 strong.

The ¥ sign is used for the Japanese yen and which other currency?

The Chinese yuan shares the ¥ sign with the yen; both names descend from the same Chinese character, 圓, meaning 'round', after the round silver dollars of the 19th century.

US Federal Reserve Notes are issued under the authority of an act passed in which year?

The Federal Reserve Act of 23 December 1913 created the Federal Reserve and authorised its notes, which first appeared in 1914 and make up almost all US paper money.

The words 'money' and 'mint' both come from Moneta, a title of which Roman goddess?

Juno Moneta's temple in Rome was where coins were struck, so her title passed to the coinage itself and reached English twice, as 'mint' and as 'money'.

Which Treasury Secretary under Lincoln appears on the US $10,000 bill?

Salmon P. Chase oversaw the Union's first paper money and put his own face on the $1 note of 1862; Chase National Bank was later named in his honour, though he never had any connection with it.

The Buffalo nickel, introduced in 1913, was part of a campaign to do what?

Make American coins more beautiful: Theodore Roosevelt had called the coinage 'artistically of atrocious hideousness' in 1904 and wanted sculptors to redo it; the Buffalo nickel carried that drive on.

The word 'dollar' comes from the name of which silver coin, first struck in Bohemia in the early 1500s?

Thaler is short for Joachimsthaler, the coin of Joachimsthal, now Jáchymov; centuries later, waste ore from the same mining town gave Marie Curie her radium.

The £ sign for the British pound is a stylised L, standing for which Latin word?

Libra, Latin for scales, was the Roman pound weight, and a pound of silver once set the value of the money; the same word is why a pound of flour is written 'lb'.

South Africa's currency takes its name from which geographical feature?

The Witwatersrand ridge, whose name means 'white water ridge', is where gold was found in 1886; Johannesburg grew up on top of it, and the currency launched in 1961 took the ridge's short name, the Rand.

The name of Poland's currency, the złoty, literally means what?

Golden is the literal meaning, from the Polish złoto, gold; the word was first used in the 14th and 15th centuries for the foreign gold coins that circulated in Poland.

Hungary's forint is named after gold coins minted from 1252 in which Italian city?

Florence first struck its gold fiorino, stamped with a lily, in 1252; the coin was so widely imitated that Hungary, rich in gold of its own, issued a copy and kept the name as forint.

Botswana's currency, the pula, literally means what in Setswana?

Rain is scarce in the Kalahari nation, so the word doubles as a term for blessing or fortune.

Guatemala's currency is named after which national symbol?

A bird: the resplendent quetzal, Guatemala's national bird, also flies on its flag; its name comes from a Nahuatl word for the male's long green tail feathers, which the ancient Maya are said to have used as money.

Bulgaria's former lev and Romania's leu both take their names from which animal?

Lion is the meaning of both words: the leu recalls the lion stamped on Dutch silver coins that circulated in the Balkans, and the lion is Bulgaria's old emblem; the lev gave way to the euro in 2026.

Costa Rica's colón is named after which historical figure?

Christopher Columbus is Cristóbal Colón in Spanish; on his fourth and last voyage, in 1502, he sailed along Costa Rica's Caribbean shore while hunting for a sea passage to the west.

Panama's balboa honours a Spanish explorer famous for reaching which body of water?

Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the isthmus in 1513 and became the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean from the Americas. His namesake exists only as coins: Panama's paper money is the US dollar.

Which country named its currency, the lempira, after a chieftain who resisted the Spanish conquest?

Honduras honours Lempira, a Lenca leader who united rival groups against the Spanish in the 1530s and was killed in 1537; he is on the one-lempira note.

Peru's sol replaced which currency, named after the Inca sun god, in 1991?

The inti lasted only six years: runaway inflation wiped out its value, so the sol replaced it at a rate of one million to one.

Which country's currency is the birr?

Ethiopia's birr was also Eritrea's money until the newly independent country launched the nakfa, named after the town of Nakfa, site of an early victory in its independence war.

Bhutan's ngultrum is pegged at parity to which currency?

The Indian rupee and the ngultrum trade one for one, so rupees are accepted across Bhutan alongside the kingdom's own notes.

Nigeria's naira replaced which currency at the start of 1973?

The Nigerian pound gave way to a decimal currency at two naira to the pound; the new name was made by shortening 'Nigeria'.

Vietnam's currency, the đồng, is the Sino-Vietnamese word for which metal?

Copper is the meaning of đồng, written 銅 in Chinese characters; yet inflation made its coins worthless, and for years the 'copper' currency had no coins at all until new ones arrived in 2003.

The Spanish word 'peso', used for many Latin American currencies, literally means what?

Weight is the literal meaning, from Latin pensum, 'something weighed': the old Spanish peso was a set measure of gold or silver before it was a coin.

Which currency did Brazil launch in 1994 in a plan that finally ended years of hyperinflation?

Real was the name of the new money, worth 2,750 old cruzeiros reais; the plan's success carried its architect, former finance minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso, to the presidency months later.

One theory holds that 'ruble' comes from a Russian verb meaning what?

The verb rubit' means 'to cut or chop', and a ruble was thought to be a piece chopped from a silver grivna bar.

The word 'rupee' traces back to 'rūpya', a term for wrought silver in which ancient language?

Sanskrit rūpya meant wrought or stamped silver; in the 1540s Sher Shah Suri gave the name to a silver coin of 178 grains, and it changed little until the 20th century.

Which Bretton Woods negotiator proposed a world currency called the bancor?

John Maynard Keynes wanted a global bank issuing its own money; the Americans, led by Harry Dexter White, preferred a smaller fund with no new currency, and the final deal followed their plan.

How many regional Federal Reserve Banks make up the US central banking system?

Twelve regional Reserve Banks, from Boston to San Francisco, each serve a numbered district, and the letter in a dollar bill's seal shows which one issued it.

Which former US branch mint, seized by its state in 1861, went on striking coins until 1909?

New Orleans struck gold and silver marked 'O'; Louisiana seized the mint when it seceded in 1861, the Confederacy ran it briefly, and it reopened in 1879 before closing for good.

Which coin of 1787, with a sundial and the motto 'Mind Your Business', was the first official coin of the United States?

The Fugio cent takes its name from the Latin for 'I flee' beside its sundial: time flies, so mind your business; its reverse linked thirteen rings around the words 'We Are One'.

Which historic document was stored at Fort Knox for safekeeping during World War II?

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution left Washington by train under armed guard in December 1941 and stayed in the Fort Knox vault until 1944, beside Lincoln Cathedral's Magna Carta.

In an ISO 4217 code like GBP or JPY, what do the first two letters represent?

The issuing country's two-letter code comes first, so GBP is the United Kingdom's GB plus P for pound; codes tied to no country start with X, which is why gold is quoted as XAU.

Which country is home to the world's oldest surviving central bank, founded in 1668?

Sweden's Riksbank has run since 1668, and for its 300th birthday in 1968 it funded the economics prize that is now awarded alongside the Nobels.

Which ancient Greek city stamped an owl on the silver coins that dominated international trade in its day?

Athens paired the owl with the head of its patron goddess Athena, on silver mined nearby at Laurion; examples have turned up as far away as Egypt, Arabia and Bactria.

The cash machine widely credited as the world's first opened in June 1967 at a branch of which British bank?

Barclays unveiled it in Enfield, north London; inventor John Shepherd-Barron planned six-digit codes until his wife said she could only remember four, which is why PINs have four digits.

Which animal appears on the reverse of South Africa's Krugerrand gold coin?

The springbok, South Africa's national animal, backs Paul Kruger's portrait; the coin was launched in 1967 to sell the country's gold to private buyers, and the United States banned its import in 1985 over apartheid.

How was the release sequence of the 50 State quarters (1999–2008) decided?

By date of joining the Union was Mint director Philip Diehl's idea: it put Delaware first, which won over the cautious Delaware congressman whose committee oversaw coinage.

The Lincoln cent debuted in 1909 to mark what?

His birth centennial fell in February 1909; the cent made Lincoln the first president on a circulating US coin, an idea George Washington had rejected as too much like a king's.

Which writer became the first Black woman to appear on a US quarter, opening a 2022 series honouring American women?

Maya Angelou raises her arms before a soaring purple martin, a nod to 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'; George Washington keeps his place on the other side.

The guinea, a British gold coin, was named after which region?

West Africa's Guinea coast supplied the gold, and early coins carry the elephant badge of the company that shipped it; first worth a pound, the guinea was fixed slightly higher in 1717.

A 1933 example of which US gold coin, never officially released, sold for $18.9 million in 2021?

Double eagle is the name of the coin; nearly all the 1933 run was melted before release, and the one that sold is the only example a private owner may legally keep.

Purple and white shell beads served as money between Native peoples and colonists in north-eastern America under what name?

Wampum's dark beads, cut from the quahog clam, were worth more than the white ones; colonists used it so widely that Massachusetts fixed its value by law in the 1640s.

Which publication has published the Big Mac Index since 1986?

The Economist launched the index in 1986 as a light-hearted test of whether currencies are fairly valued: if a Big Mac costs less in one country than another, its currency looks cheap.

Which law of economics holds that bad money drives out good?

Gresham's law describes people spending worn or debased coins and hoarding sound ones; Sir Thomas Gresham explained the problem to Elizabeth I, and his name was put on it three centuries later.

Bitcoin's white paper was published in 2008 under which pseudonym?

Satoshi Nakamoto has never been identified; the first block, mined in January 2009, quotes a Times headline about a second bank bailout, widely read as a jab at the banking system.

When the IMF created Special Drawing Rights in 1969, each was worth how much gold?

One SDR was defined as 0.888671 grams of fine gold, exactly one US dollar at $35 an ounce; since 1974 the SDR has been valued on a basket of currencies reviewed every five years.

When the CFA franc was created in 1945, what did 'CFA' stand for?

CFA meant Colonies françaises d'Afrique when the franc was created on 26 December 1945; it was reread as Communauté française d'Afrique in 1958 and later as Communauté financière africaine.

Which structures appear on the reverse of every euro banknote?

Bridges stand for communication between Europe's peoples and the wider world; like the windows and doorways on the front, they copy period styles and show no actual structure.

Robert Kalina designed the euro banknotes while working for the central bank of which country, then home of the schilling?

Austria's central bank employed Kalina, whose entry beat more than forty rival designs in 1996; he later drew banknotes for Azerbaijan and Syria.

Which euro banknote denomination is absent from the Europa series over crime concerns?

The ECB decided in 2016 to drop the €500 from the Europa series over its use in money laundering and crime; issuance ended in 2019 and existing notes stayed legal tender.

The common side of euro coins was designed by Luc Luycx of which country's mint?

Belgium's national mint employed Luycx, whose map at first showed only the fifteen EU members of the time; after the union grew, the design was redrawn in 2007 to show the whole of Europe.

In which German city is the European Central Bank headquartered?

Frankfurt has housed the ECB since 1998; in 2014 it moved into twin towers built onto the city's old wholesale market hall, a 1920s landmark kept as part of the new headquarters.

Rome introduced the denarius as its standard silver coin while fighting Hannibal in which conflict?

The Second Punic War was at its height when Rome overhauled its coinage around 211 BC; the denarius, 'containing ten', took its name from the ten bronze asses it was worth.

Which modern currency name survives from the Roman denarius?

The dinar takes its name from the denarius, passed on through Greek; Umayyad caliphs struck the first gold dinars in the 690s, and Serbia, Iraq and Algeria still spend dinars.

Which ancient Greek coin's name is thought to mean a 'handful' of roasting spits?

Drachma comes from a Greek verb meaning to grasp: six obols made one, and the obol is said to have begun as a metal spit, six being as many as a hand could hold.

The gold ducat, later known as the sequin, originated in 1284 in which city?

Venice struck the gold ducat from the 1280s; its later name, zecchino, from the Italian for a mint, gave English 'sequin', a word for the coin long before it meant a spangle on a dress.

Which English word descends from 'solidus', the name of the standard gold coin of the later Roman Empire?

Soldier reached English through Old French: troops were paid in solidi, so a soldier was literally a man serving for pay; Constantine's coin kept its gold content for centuries.

Australia's 1966 decimal currency was first going to be called what, before a public outcry?

The royal, picked to stress Australia's link with the Crown, was announced in June 1963 and met three months of public protest before Treasurer Harold Holt dropped it.

Sweden's krona replaced which currency at par under the Scandinavian Monetary Union of 1873?

The riksdaler gave way when the union put its members on a shared gold-backed currency; it broke up in the First World War, but all three kingdoms still call their money the crown.

Denmark rejected the euro in a referendum held in which year?

Danes voted 53 percent against joining the euro on 28 September 2000; the krone has instead been pegged to the euro within ERM II since 1999.

Which currency did Finland use before it adopted the euro?

Finland's markka began in 1860 as one-fourth of a Russian ruble while the tsar still ruled the country; five years later it was cut loose from the ruble and tied to silver.

Which unit, once Egypt's main currency, survives as one-hundredth of the Egyptian pound?

The piastre, or qirsh, lives on as small change: when Egypt moved to a gold standard in 1885, its new pound was divided into 100 of them.

Which institution issues the renminbi?

The People's Bank of China has issued the renminbi since December 1948, almost a year before the People's Republic was proclaimed; the Bank of China is a separate commercial bank.

Which country cut five zeros from its currency in 2018 and six more in 2021 as hyperinflation raged?

Venezuela's bolívar soberano replaced 100,000 of the old kind in 2018 and the bolívar digital a million of those in 2021; with a 2008 cut, fourteen zeros had gone in all.

Which famous artwork appears on the back of the 1,000-yen note introduced in 2024?

The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai's woodblock print, backs a note whose portrait is a hologram that seems to turn in 3D, one of the features added to defeat counterfeiters.

Which small bird replaced Britannia on the farthing, Britain's smallest coin, in 1937?

The wren, one of Britain's smallest birds, was designed for the coinage of the king who abdicated in 1936, so it first appeared under his brother George VI and stayed until the farthing was withdrawn.

Benedetto Pistrucci's St George and the Dragon first appeared in 1817 on which new British gold coin?

The sovereign of 1817 replaced the guinea after the Napoleonic Wars; Pistrucci, an Italian gem engraver, taught himself to cut steel dies for it, and his design is still struck today.

Which country decimalised its currency on the same day as the UK, 15 February 1971?

Ireland switched on the same day because its pound was tied one-for-one to sterling; in Britain the banks shut for four days beforehand to convert every account.

Which pre-decimal British coin, traditionally slipped into a bride's shoe for luck, was nicknamed the 'tanner'?

Sixpence pieces were expected to vanish with decimalisation in 1971, when one banker scorned the 'sentimentality for the dear old tanner'; worth 2½ new pence, they stayed legal tender until 1980.

Which US circulating coin is the smallest in diameter and the thinnest?

The dime is smaller than the cent and the nickel because it began as a silver coin holding a tenth of a dollar's metal; it measures 17.91 mm across and 1.35 mm thick.

Why did US banknotes shrink by about 30 percent in 1929?

Printing costs were the reason: every note shrank to today's size, and each denomination was given one standard design, which cut the number of designs in circulation.

Which country's currency has the ISO code KRW?

South Korea's won came back in 1962 at one for every ten of the hwan, which had replaced the first won only nine years earlier.

In Mesopotamian temples, a fixed measure of which grain, also brewed into beer, served as a unit of account?

Barley was the main staple the temples stored and handed out, so a set measure of it priced everything else.

Israel's new shekel replaced the hyperinflated old shekel in the mid-1980s at what ratio?

At 1000:1 the new shekel struck three zeros from prices after inflation neared 450 percent a year; the old shekel had itself replaced the Israeli pound only five years earlier.

Which animal appears on the reverse of Canada's two-dollar 'toonie'?

Brent Townsend's polar bear on an ice floe is on the reverse of the bi-metallic toonie, introduced in February 1996 to replace the paper $2 bill, which lasted about a year in circulation.

Foreigners knew Thailand's baht as the tical in the days when Thailand was still called what?

Siam printed 'tical' in English on its banknotes into the 1920s and became Thailand in 1939; the baht was first a measure of silver, and Thais still buy gold by the baht.

Which currency, introduced in western Germany in June 1948, prompted the Soviet blockade of Berlin days later?

The Deutsche Mark replaced the Reichsmark in the western zones; the Soviets answered by cutting every road and rail link to West Berlin, which the Allies then supplied by air for almost a year.

What does the 'N' in MXN stand for, a code adopted when Mexico cut three zeros from its peso in 1993?

Nuevo: the 1993 'nuevo peso' was worth 1,000 old ones and replaced the code MXP; the word was dropped from the currency's name in 1996, but the N stayed.

Which country's currency is the ringgit?

Malaysia's ringgit takes its name from a Malay word for 'jagged', first used for the milled edges of the Spanish silver dollars that once circulated there.

On the Turkish republic's first banknotes, issued in 1927, the Turkish text was in which script?

Arabic script was still used for Turkish when the notes were ordered; Atatürk's alphabet reform came less than a year after they appeared, and notes with Turkish in Latin letters followed in the late 1930s.

Roughly how many first Turkish lira bought one US dollar at the end of 2004?

About 1,350,000 old lira bought a dollar in late December 2004; the new lira of 1 January 2005 dropped six zeros, so the rate became roughly 1.35.

Which country's rupiah lost over 80 percent of its value within a year of floating in 1997?

Indonesia let the rupiah float on 14 August 1997; its collapse sent prices soaring, and the riots that followed ended President Suharto's three decades in power in May 1998.

Which country cancelled its two largest banknotes overnight in November 2016, voiding most of its cash?

India hoped the shock would flush out untaxed 'black money', but about 99% of the cancelled notes were simply paid into banks. The two notes had made up roughly 86% of the cash in circulation.

Which monarch holds the Guinness record for appearing on the most currencies, at least 33 around the world?

Elizabeth II outdid her great-great-grandmother Victoria, who appeared on 21 currencies, and her grandfather George V, who managed 19.

Which currency did Spain use for more than 130 years before the euro replaced it?

Peseta began as slang for a coin worth a fifth of a peso and became Spain's official unit in 1868. Tiny Andorra used it too, having no currency of its own.

Which country became the first to adopt a decimal currency in 1704, almost ninety years before the United States?

Russia went decimal when Peter the Great set the ruble at a hundred kopecks, while Britain clung to pounds, shillings and pence until the 1970s.

Croatia's kuna, replaced by the euro in 2023, took its name from which animal whose pelts once served as money?

Marten skins were collected as tax in medieval Slavonia, and the animal lives on as the design of Croatia's one-euro coin.

Zambia and Malawi both call their currency the kwacha, a word meaning what in local Bantu languages?

Dawn was a rallying image for Zambia's independence movement, which promised a new day of self-rule. Malawi's smaller unit, the tambala, means rooster.

Which empress appears on a trade coin that mints have kept dating 1780 ever since her death that year?

Maria Theresa thalers were so trusted across the Arab world and East Africa that Britain and France struck their own copies to keep their Red Sea trade moving.

Which US company launched traveller's cheques in 1891, after its president struggled to get cash while in Europe?

American Express acted after its president, J. C. Fargo, found his letters of credit almost useless in smaller European cities, and an employee devised the cheque in response.

Albania's lek is often said to honour which ancient conqueror, shown on horseback on the first one-lek coin?

Alexander the Great is often called Leka in Albanian and rode across the 1926 one-lek coin, though a rival account says parliament named the money for the medieval lord Lekë Dukagjini.

Mauritania and which island nation have the world's only non-decimal currencies, each split into five smaller units?

Madagascar splits its ariary into five iraimbilanja, just as Mauritania's ouguiya equals five khoums, so neither fits the decimal pattern every other country uses.

What kind of exchange rate lets a currency's value rise and fall with market forces rather than being set by government?

Floating rates became the norm after the early 1970s, when the post-war system that tied most currencies to the dollar broke down.

Which Asian financial hub has pegged its currency to the US dollar at about 7.8 to one since 1983?

Hong Kong adopted the link in October 1983 after a currency crash remembered as Black Saturday, and its monetary authority still buys or sells US dollars to hold the rate between 7.75 and 7.85.

Which investor made about a billion dollars by betting against sterling on Black Wednesday in 1992?

George Soros had built a huge short position that paid off when Britain was forced to pull the pound out of Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism.

A 1985 deal among five nations to weaken the US dollar is named after which New York hotel where they met?

The Plaza hosted finance ministers from the US, Japan, West Germany, France and Britain, and the dollar then fell so far that a second accord followed in 1987 to steady it.

Which theory holds that exchange rates should settle where one basket of goods costs the same in every country?

Purchasing power parity rates are steadier than market rates, which is why economists use them to compare the size of national economies and the cost of living.

When a government with a fixed exchange rate officially resets its currency at a lower rate, what is the move called?

Devaluation is a deliberate act of policy; when market forces alone drag a currency down, economists call it depreciation instead.

Which currency pair do traders nickname 'cable', after the telegraph line that once carried its rate under the Atlantic?

Pound–dollar quotes were sent across the ocean by transatlantic cable from the mid-19th century, and the trading-floor shorthand outlived the technology.

Which body was set up at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference to police exchange rates and lend to countries in trouble?

International Monetary Fund members originally had to hold their currencies within one percent of an agreed rate, buying or selling foreign money to stay in line.

Which country stunned markets in January 2015 by suddenly scrapping its currency's three-year cap against the euro?

Switzerland's central bank had vowed to buy foreign currency without limit to hold the line at 1.20 francs per euro, so its retreat sent the franc briefly up by 30%.

Which city handles the largest share of the world's foreign exchange trading, well ahead of New York and Singapore?

London and the rest of the UK handle more than a third of all currency trading, about twice the share of the entire United States.

In currency trading, which term names the smallest standard move in a rate, usually the fourth decimal place?

Pip is usually spelled out as percentage in point. The yen is the exception: its second decimal place counts as one, because a single yen is worth so little.

At a currency exchange counter, what name is given to the gap between the buying price and the selling price?

The spread is how a dealer earns money without charging a visible fee, and traders who bring large volumes can bargain it down.

What is the practice of buying a currency in one market and instantly selling it in another to pocket the price gap?

Arbitrage polices itself: as traders pile in, the gap closes, which is why exchange rates quoted in different cities stay almost identical.

What kind of exchange rate is agreed today for swapping two currencies on a set date in the future?

Forward rate contracts let an importer fix today the cost of a foreign bill due months away, removing the risk that the currency moves first.

Which Nobel-winning economist proposed a tax on every currency conversion to discourage short-term speculation?

James Tobin meant the levy to penalise quick round trips into another currency, but by the late 1990s his name was attached to almost any tax on short-term trading.

The knock-on damage Mexico's 1994 peso crisis did to other Latin American economies was nicknamed after which drink?

Tequila became shorthand for financial contagion after Mexico's troubles rattled Chile and Brazil, and the United States organised a $50 billion rescue within weeks.

Which 2016 vote sent the pound overnight to its lowest level against the dollar in more than three decades?

The Brexit referendum result pushed sterling to a 31-year low as the count came in, and by that October it had lost 14% against the euro.

Which South American country held its peso at exactly one US dollar for a decade before a 2002 collapse?

Argentina abandoned the one-to-one promise in January 2002 after a financial crisis, and the peso quickly sank to four per dollar.

Which South American country scrapped its own currency, the sucre, and adopted the US dollar in its place?

Ecuador gave up after the sucre lost two-thirds of its value in a single year, ending at 25,000 to the dollar. The old money was named after independence leader Antonio José de Sucre.

Which Nordic currency is tied to the euro within a narrow band through the EU's ERM II mechanism?

Danish krone holders got the link without the currency itself: Denmark's voters turned the euro down at the ballot box, yet the central bank still shadows it.

The US Secret Service, now famous for guarding presidents, was founded in 1865 to fight which crime?

Counterfeiting was rampant after the Civil War, which is why the agency sat inside the Treasury Department until 2003.

Which founding father on the US ten-dollar bill was born in the West Indies and never served as president?

Alexander Hamilton earned the place as the first Treasury Secretary, and he is the only person on today's US notes born outside what became the United States.

Which Civil War general turned president appears on the US fifty-dollar bill, opposite a view of the Capitol?

Ulysses S. Grant has survived two attempts in Congress, in 2005 and 2010, to replace his portrait with Ronald Reagan's.

Which president, a fierce opponent of paper currency and the national bank, ironically ended up on a US banknote?

Andrew Jackson turned against paper notes after land speculation on credit nearly bankrupted him, and as president he insisted that public land be bought with coin.

Which First Lady's portrait appeared on US one-dollar paper notes from 1886, decades after her husband led the country?

Martha Washington appeared alone on the 1886 note and beside George on an 1896 one. Pocahontas had already featured on US paper money, but only as a figure in a scene.

The Latin motto 'E pluribus unum', which appears on US coins, translates into English as what?

Out of many, one served as America's unofficial motto from its early years until 1956, when Congress adopted 'In God We Trust' as the official one.

Which president appears on the 100,000-dollar note of the 1930s, made only for transfers between Federal Reserve Banks?

Woodrow Wilson's note never reached the public: about 42,000 were printed, and outside the government the survivors may only be shown in museums.

In 1943 the US Mint struck one-cent coins from which zinc-coated metal to save a scarcer one for ammunition?

Steel cents caused trouble at once: vending machines' magnets rejected them as slugs and their cut edges rusted.

A small letter D stamped on a modern US coin shows that it was made at the mint in which city?

Denver inherited the letter from Dahlonega, Georgia, whose mint had struck coins from locally mined ore until it closed in 1861.

After official Spencer Clark put his own face on a five-cent note, Congress barred whose portraits from US currency?

Living people were ruled out by a furious Congress, which also scrapped the five-cent note itself. In one telling, lawmakers had meant to honour the explorer William Clark.

On the Great Seal printed on the US one-dollar bill, the eagle grips arrows in one talon and what in the other?

An olive branch stands for peace and the arrows for war, and the eagle's head is turned toward the branch to show which the country prefers.

The ridged edge on a US quarter copies a centuries-old defence against people doing what to coins?

Shaving them down, known as clipping, let cheats pocket valuable slivers and still spend the coin at full value; a ridged edge shows at once if any is missing.

Which US bill earned the slang name 'sawbuck' because its Roman numeral resembled the crossed legs of a sawhorse?

$10 notes of the mid-1800s carried a bold Roman numeral X, which reminded people of the X-shaped ends of a sawbuck, the frame used for sawing logs.

A small star at the end of a US banknote's serial number shows that the note is what?

A replacement note stands in for one spoiled during printing, and the star lets the government keep an exact count of the notes it has made.

Which US coin did the Mint stop making for everyday use in November 2025, mainly because of its cost?

The penny cost 3.69 cents to mint by 2024, so every one struck lost the government money. Annual collector sets are still produced.

Which Revolutionary War paper currency lost value so fast that being 'not worth' one became an American saying?

A Continental was printed in such quantities that it became almost worthless, a failure that pushed the new nation to base its money on precious metals in 1792.

Amid a 1960s coin shortage and widespread hoarding, which metal did Congress remove from US quarters in 1965?

Silver was close to being worth more as bullion than as money, so people hoarded the coins. The half dollar kept a reduced share until a 1970 law removed that too.

Which US banknote does Congress keep barring the Treasury from redesigning, partly to protect vending machine makers?

$1 bills carry a back design that dates from 1935 and a front from 1963, while every note from the five upward has been restyled with new security features.

On the back of the US one-dollar bill, what symbol floats above the unfinished pyramid of thirteen steps?

An all-seeing eye, the Eye of Providence, has fed theories of a Masonic plot, yet Freemasons only took up the emblem years after the seal was designed.

The cedi replaced a colonial-style pound in 1965 as the currency of which West African country?

Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, introduced the cedi and its pesewa coins; decades of inflation later, the country cut four zeros off it.