🇹🇭Thai Baht (THB)

Before decimalisation, Thai money was counted in weights of silver: a baht was a little over fifteen grams, subdivided into salung and fuang, and English speakers called the unit the tical well into the twentieth century. The decimal system of one baht to a hundred satang was introduced in 1897 under King Chulalongkorn, and the tical disappeared from official English use in 1925. The weight meaning survived alongside the currency, which is why gold shops across Thailand quote in baht of gold rather than in grams, a source of confusion for anyone reading a Thai price list for the first time.

On 2 July 1997, after months of spending reserves to defend a basket peg, the Bank of Thailand let the baht float. The devaluation that followed is the conventional starting point of the Asian financial crisis, which spread through the region within weeks. Thailand has run a managed float ever since, with the central bank smoothing sharp moves rather than defending a level. Tourism gives the currency a seasonal rhythm, since arrivals bring foreign currency to be exchanged, and the baht is also one of the region's more actively traded currencies for trade settlement with Thailand's neighbours.

The baht is the sole legal tender of Thailand and also circulates informally in border areas of Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, where traders accept it alongside the local currency.