Currency board Helena continue to operate currency boards, backing their locally printed currency notes with pound sterling reserves. A gold standard is a special case of a currency board where the value of the national currency is linked to the value of gold instead of a foreign currency. For a precise definition of what constitutes a currency board, including past examples, see: Currency board A currency board is a monetary authority which is required to maintain a fixed exchange rate with a foreign currency. This policy objective requires the conventional objectives of a central bank to be subordinated to the exchange rate
World currency to the United States dollar. However, as the United States has the world's largest economy, most international transactions continue to be conducted with the United States dollar, and it has remained the "de facto" world currency. According to Robert Gilpin in "Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order" (2001): "Somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of international financial transactions are denominated in dollars. For decades the dollar has also been the world's principal reserve currency; in 1996, the dollar accounted for approximately two-thirds of the world's foreign exchange reserves", as compared to about one-quarter held in euros (see Reserve