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
Currency mostly paper, but Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation developed the world's first polymer currency in the 1980s that went into circulation on the nation's bicentenary in 1988. Now used in some 22 countries (over 40 if counting commemorative issues), polymer currency dramatically improves the life span of banknotes and prevents counterfeiting. Currency use is based on the concept of lex monetae; that a sovereign state decides which currency it shall use. Currently, the International Organization for Standardization has introduced a three-letter system of codes (ISO 4217) to define currency (as opposed to simple names or currency signs), in