European Currency Unit opportunity for foreign diversification without reliance on the currency of a single country. The ECU was conceived on 13 March 1979 as an internal accounting unit. It had the ISO 4217 currency code XEU. On 1 January 1999, the euro (with the code EUR and symbol €) replaced the ECU, at the value €1 = 1 ECU. Unlike the ECU, the euro is a real currency, although not all member states participate (for details on euro membership see Eurozone). Two of the countries in the ECU basket of currencies, UK and Denmark, did not join the eurozone, and a third,
World currency unit The WCU – World Currency Unit (WCU) is an indexed unit of account that stands for a unit of real global purchasing power. Since each unit by design represents a stable unit of purchasing power, the stipulated interest rate on WCU-denominated bonds represents a real interest rate. In principle, the common denomination of bonds by issuers from different parts of the world using the WCU, as well as the greater transparency of real interest rates, will produce more efficient capital markets, as savers and borrowers around the world converge in their understanding of what each basis point of interest means