Currency trivia

[swansont]

Something that came up in the cryptocurrency thread reminded me of this bit of trivia: In the days of the old west, people used the US dollar and the Spanish 8 Reale coin (they were "pieces of 8") interchangeably because they were basically the same size and made of silver, and that worked because the value was based on the amount of precious metal. They used to chop up the coins when lower denominations weren't readily available. In deference to the Spanish (presumably), it was into 8 bits (1 Reale each) so 25 cents was two bits.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar

(This makes clear that the Spanish dollar was used by a lot of folks, much like the US dollar is used outside the US today)