I only just realized that I don’t truly understand the currency symbols of different countries well enough. When making international investments or trading foreign exchange, just looking at the codes can sometimes really lead to mix-ups, so I decided to put together a currency symbol table for easy reference.

In fact, the biggest role of currency symbols is convenience. Writing $40 is much simpler than writing 40 US dollar, and you can recognize which country’s currency it is at a glance. For example, when you see €, you know it involves euro-related currency pairs, and combinations like €/$ are extremely common in the forex market.

I compiled some commonly used symbols: US dollar $, euro €, British pound £, Japanese yen ¥, Chinese renminbi ￥, Hong Kong dollar HK$, New Taiwan dollar NT$, South Korean won ₩, Indian rupee ₹, and Thai baht ฿. In reality, most countries have their own symbols. They differ across Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Africa. If you often do international transactions, it’s best to keep a currency symbol table nearby.

The ones that are easiest to confuse are those “universal” symbols. The $ symbol is used in more than 30 countries— the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong all use $. So when you see $, you need to look at the code or letters in front to confirm which country’s currency it refers to. The ￥ symbol is similar: Japan and China both use it. The way to tell them apart is to add the code— for example, CNY￥100 means Chinese yuan, and JPY￥100 means Japanese yen.

If you often need to enter these symbols, both Mac and Windows have shortcut keys. On Mac, the euro is Shift+option+2; on Windows, it’s Alt+E. For US dollar, it’s Shift+4 on both. For British pound, Mac is option+3 and Windows is Alt+L. Mastering these shortcuts can save you a lot of time.

One more interesting point: in the forex market, the ฿ symbol represents Thai baht, but in the cryptocurrency space it stands for Bitcoin. The same symbol can have completely different meanings in different fields, which is also why understanding the details of a currency symbol table is quite important. If you’re investing, you still need to get these straight—otherwise, it’s easy to make mistakes when reading reports.