Eli5 Why do some countries measure their currencies in large units?

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For example in Vietnam, lunch can be bought for 50,000 VD and in South Korea, apartments can cost several MILLION Won. Why do some countries use such large denominations?

In: Economics

10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of people say inflation. But a lot of currencies are close to each other now because they started out the same.

The value of coins was the value of the metal in the coin. When countries made their own coins they made them similar to coins in other countries. Same material, weight and “value”.

Some countries made their coins different for some reason, like limited trade, lack of copper, silver or other metals.

For example if the lowest value coin was made out of iron instead of copper, the iron coin would be the “1 unit” coin.

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