That's as arbitrary as the idea that only a nation-state can support a currency.

miles · on March 27, 2013

The ISO 4217 currency codes [1] look pretty arbitrary too. For example, why is the Afghan afghani "AFN" instead of "AFA", or the Japanese yen "JPY" instead of "JAY"?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217#Active_codes

TazeTSchnitzel · on March 27, 2013

It's JPY because the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 2-letter country code for Japan is JP. Similarly, it is GBP because the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 2-letter country code for the United Kingdom is GB, not UK. ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 is used everywhere, for example on the web for ccTLDs (although the UK is an exception, since it has GB allocated, but for backwards-compatibility with another network, it also got UK, and now disallows registrations on GB).

smackfu · on March 27, 2013

The Afghani is another case of revaluation. It was AFA before 2003.

dudus · on March 27, 2013

Arbitrary or not it's a standard that's worth following. Maybe there should be a prefix for country-less currencies.

XXB maybe?

wcoenen · on March 27, 2013

That prefix already exists, it's a single X. For example, gold is XAU.

XBC is already used for "European Unit of Account 9". XBI, XBO, XBT and XBN are available.

http://www.currency-iso.org/dam/downloads/dl_iso_table_a1.xm...