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Many other currencies around the world, such as the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan, were initially based on the Spanish dollar and other 8-real coins. [5] Most theories trace the origin of the "$" symbol, which originally had two vertical bars, to the pillars of Hercules wrapped in ribbons that appear on the reverse side of the Spanish ...
The symbol appears in business correspondence in the 1770s from Spanish America, the early independent U.S., British America and Britain, referring to the Spanish American peso, [1] [2] also known as "Spanish dollar" or "piece of eight" in British America.
The dollar itself actually originated from the peso or Spanish dollar in the late 18th century. The sign "₱" is used in the Philippines. The silver peso worth eight reales was also known in English as a Spanish dollar or "piece of eight" and was widely used for international trade from the 16th to the 19th century.
The symbol for most of those currencies is the dollar sign $; the same symbol is used by many countries using peso currencies. The name "dollar" originates from the "thaler" (from thal , German for valley) suffix in the name of a 29 g silver coin called the Joachimsthaler minted in Bohemia .
The history of the United States dollar began with moves by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America to establish a national currency based on the Spanish silver dollar, which had been in use in the North American colonies of the Kingdom of Great Britain for over 100 years prior to the United States Declaration of Independence.
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The piece of eight had the same intrinsic value as the thaler and by the end of the 17th century it too was being called dollar (and was so designated in Jamaican monetary legislation of 1738). By the mid 18th century the piece of eight was commonly known in British North America as the Spanish dollar.
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