The US Dollar is the currency of the United States. The abbreviation used to refer to the US Dollar is USD, while the currency symbol is $.
Below you will find information and details on the US dollar, as well as up-to-date analysis and the latest news on the US dollar.
U.S. Dollar Information
The central bank of the United States is the Federal Reserve (“Fed” for short).
The US dollar is the most traded currency in the Forex market, paired with the major currencies. The exchange rate most followed by forex traders, which sees the US dollar as one of the protagonists, is the euro-dollar exchange rate.
The most common US dollar nickname is the greenback (greenback in English).
The Importance of the US Dollar
The US dollar is the most converted currency in the world and is used regularly as a benchmark in the Forex market. As the dollar is the dominant world reserve currency, it is held by almost every central bank in the world. Furthermore, the dollar is used as the standard currency in the commodity market and therefore has a direct impact on the prices of commodities.
The dollar and dollarization
Due to its spread and international recognition, some countries such as Panama and Ecuador use the US dollar as their official currency, a practice known as dollarization. For many other countries, however, the dollar is an alternative form of payment, even if not the official reference currency.
The US Dollar and its Gold Link
From 1806, US dollar issuance operations began to be tied to gold standardization, which meant that for each note, the central bank had to guarantee ownership of its gold value.
The well-known Bretton Woods system has been adopted by many countries to fix the exchange rates for all currencies in gold. Since the United States held most of the world’s gold, many countries directly pegged the value of their currencies to the dollar. Central banks kept the exchange rates between their currency and the US dollar fixed, making the US dollar de facto a world currency. In 1973, the United States ended the peg of the dollar’s value to gold.
US dollar at a glance |
| Name: US Dollar |
| Symbol: $, cents: ¢ |
| ISO 4217 code: USD |
| Central bank interest rate: 0.25% |
| Most common exchange rate: EURUSD |
| Nicknames: greenback, greenback, bones, dead presidents |
| Coins: 1¢, 5¢, 10¢, 25¢ (rare: $1, 50¢) |
| Banknotes: $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100 (rare: $2) |
| Central Bank: Federal Reserve Bank |
| Website: www.federalreserve.gov |
| User Countries: United States, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guam, Haiti, Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Panama, Puerto Rico , Turks and Caicos, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Wake Island, East Timor |
