I recently realized while trading forex that I don't really have a deep understanding of the symbols for different currencies. For example, seeing € immediately tells me it's the euro, but the $ symbol is used in over 30 countries, including the US dollar, Canadian dollar, and Australian dollar. When you're not clear, it's really easy to make mistakes.

Actually, the main purpose of currency symbols is to save effort; writing $40 is definitely simpler than writing 40 US dollars, and it's easier to recognize at a glance. Especially in international investing or forex trading, being able to quickly identify the value fluctuations of different currencies is very important. For common currency pairs like EUR/USD and EUR/JPY, seeing the € symbol immediately indicates the involvement of the euro.

What's most interesting is that some symbols are reused. For example, ¥ represents Japanese yen in Japan, but in China, it indicates the Renminbi, so you need to write JPY¥100 or CNY¥100 to distinguish them. Also, the ฿ symbol is used for Thai Baht in forex, but in cryptocurrency, it represents Bitcoin—completely different things.

By the way, if you want to quickly input these currency symbols, both Mac and Windows have shortcut keys. For example, on Mac, the euro is Shift+Option+2; on Windows, it's Alt+E. The British pound and US dollar also have their own quick input methods. Once you're familiar with them, it definitely makes trading or transferring money much more convenient.