🇬🇧British Pound (GBP)

Sterling traces back to Anglo-Saxon England, where a pound of money meant a pound weight of silver pennies. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 and took over note issue; the currency stayed non-decimal until 15 February 1971, when 240 pence to the pound and 20 shillings to the pound gave way to a simple hundred pence. Banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland still print their own notes, but they are sterling all the same, not a separate currency.

The pound is one of the four most traded currencies and London remains the largest foreign exchange centre in the world, which means sterling rates are quoted deeply and move quickly. Traders call the pound-dollar pair cable, after the transatlantic telegraph cable that carried its quotes in the nineteenth century. Sterling responds to Bank of England rate decisions and to UK inflation and employment releases.

Sterling is the currency of the United Kingdom — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — and several Crown dependencies and overseas territories, including Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar, issue their own local pound at par with it.