Which currency is the world’s oldest still in continuous use?

Pound sterling is widely recognized as the world’s oldest currency still in continuous use.

Its history reaches back to Anglo-Saxon England, where the pound was originally a unit of weight for silver. Sterling developed as a monetary system over many centuries, and the pound became the foundation of English and later British coinage. The Bank of England was established in 1694 and has issued banknotes for the currency since the late 17th century.

The pound sterling has the ISO 4217 code GBP and uses the symbol £. It is the official currency of the United Kingdom and several Crown Dependencies, although those territories issue their own notes and coins alongside sterling.

Sterling is not the same as the pound used by every country whose currency has “pound” in its name. The term specifically identifies the British currency and its historical monetary system, whose continuity predates modern currencies such as the euro and U.S. dollar.