Why is the dollar sign a letter S?

The letter S appears nowhere in the word “dollar”, yet an S with a line through it ($) is unmistakably the dollar sign. But why an S? Why isn’t the dollar sign something like a "A (like the former South Vietnamese dong, or the totally-not-a-joke-currency Dogecoin)?

There’s a good story behind it, but here’s a big hint: the dollar sign isn’t a dollar sign.

It’s a peso sign.

Fascinating little bit of history. Us Dutch used the ‘rijksdaalder‘ (where the suffix ‘-daalder’ is the Dutch transliteration of the same word ‘dollar’ comes from) from the late 16th century all the way up until 2002, when we moved to the euro.

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