> What's the oldest currency in the world that's still in use today?And the answer: the British pound.At more than 1,200 years old, the British pound is the world's oldest currencystill in use. It's the fourth most-traded currency in the foreign exchangemarket, after the United States dollar, the euro, and the Japanese yen.Photo credit: Matt Candy/Getty Images.The British pound has been around longenough to see the turn of the century over 12 times. Since the times ofCharlemagne, the pound has been in circulation in the United Kingdom as itsprincipal monetary value and continues to be circulated in abundance today. Apound is historically equivalent to the value of a pound of silver, thus thecommon name of "pound sterling," yet today it's printed on polymer notes. The name of the British pound can be traced to its origins in the Roman era.Deriving from the Latin word libra, which means weight or balance (scales), thewords libra pondo meant pound weight. Libra may have been left behind, but itremains in the recognizable £ symbol for the pound sterling – as well as the shorthand [https://www.askqotd.com/the-octothorpe/] for the unit of a mass pound(lb). Naturally, weight and currency were related in the Roman era, as pricestypically were equated to the weight of the currency (e.g. a pound of silver).Fun fact!When the decimal system was introduced[https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Decimalisation-in-Britain/] in 1971, things got a whole lot easier but a lot less fun. Decimalizationreplaced the old-style money which included weird and wonderful coins and noteslike farthings, florins, threepenny pieces, crowns, half crowns, and guineas.