The United States Dollar - US Currency - USD

US Dollar Rates - US Currency Charts - Currency Symbols

The United States Dollar ($, USD, numeric code 840, US$) is the official unit of currency of the United States of America. It has also been adopted by the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, Cambodia, East Timor, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Panama, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

It is a decimal currency which means that each dollar is divided into 100 equal value cents. Throughout the World the USD is seen as a key currency, largely because the USA is regarded as one of the planet’s largest economies and because it is the official denomination of the oil and precious metals (gold and silver etc) markets.

US Dollar History
The currency was officially adopted by the United States on July 6th, 1785 as appointed by the Congress of the Confederation/ the United States Congress Assembled. Initially it was specified (by the Coinage Act, 1792) that the Dollar was assigned value when compared to the amount of gold or silver it measured out. This value was then used to facilitate the sale and purchase of goods and services. This is very different to the way we see the US Dollar today; rather than the Dollar being assigned a value by precious metals we now assign a value to precious metals, goods and services based on their cost in Dollars.

As you would expect, the value of the US$ was mainly influenced by the flow of gold and silver into and out of the United States. For this reason its value remained relatively stable until 1913 (evaluation of data from the US Department of Treasury) over 100 years since its official adoption. It was estimated that in 2006 the USD only had one twenty-fifth of the buying power of the pre 1913 ‘Buck’.

Common Nicknames:

• Buck(s), Greenback(s)
• Washington(s) = $1 bill
• Jefferson(s) = $2 bill
• Lincoln(s) = $5 bill
• Hamilton(s) = $10 bill
• Benjamin(s) = $100 bill