I recently realized that my understanding of currency symbols from different countries is a bit confusing, especially when trading forex. Seeing € immediately indicates euros, but seeing ¥ or $ can be confusing because these symbols are used in many countries.

Actually, the main purpose of currency symbols is to simplify writing; writing $40 is definitely faster than writing 40 US dollars. So I organized the commonly used national currencies. For example, the United States uses USD ($), Japan uses JPY (¥), the UK uses GBP (£), Europe uses EUR (€), and Korea's won is KRW (₩), Thailand's baht is THB (฿). In Asia, New Taiwan dollar is NT$, Hong Kong dollar is HK$ or $, Chinese yuan is ¥ or yuan, and Singapore dollar is SGD ($).

The most interesting thing is that the symbols ¥ and $ are used in many places, so they often get mixed up. For example, ¥ in Japan indicates Japanese yen, while in China it indicates Chinese yuan. To distinguish, people write JPY¥100 or CNY¥100. The $ symbol is even more widespread, used in over 30 countries. The US dollar is written as US$, New Taiwan dollar as NT$, Canadian dollar as C$, and Australian dollar as A$.

Here's a fun fact: ฿ is the symbol for Thai baht in forex, but in cryptocurrency, it represents Bitcoin—completely two different things.

By the way, if you want to quickly input these currency symbols, Mac and Windows have shortcuts. On Mac, euro is Shift+Option+2, pound is Option+3, and dollar is Shift+4. On Windows, it's simpler: for euro, press Alt+E; for pound, press Alt+L; and for dollar, also Shift+4. From now on, when you see forex pairs like EUR/USD or GBP/JPY, you'll immediately understand what they mean.