A closer look
British currency is historically called the pound sterling because a little over a thousand years ago under the reign of King Athelstan it was literally defined as the exact equivalent weight of one physical tower pound of high-purity sterling silver, meaning the entire foundational bedrock of one of the world's oldest and most prestigious global financial systems was originally based on nothing more than exhausted medieval merchants getting incredibly tired of constantly weighing heavily tarnished, clipped coins and arbitrarily agreeing that a highly specific, very heavy lump of shiny metal was the absolute undisputed pinnacle of macroeconomic reliability
