Interesting question. The “base” unit is largely arbitrary, but the smallest subunit of a currency has more practical implications, so it may also help to think in those terms. Back in the day, you had all kinds of wonky fractions but now basically everyone is decimalized, and 1⁄100 is usually the smallest unit. I imagine then that the value of the cent is as important here as the value of the dollar.
Here’s a totally speculative theory based on that.
When we write numbers, we have to include any zeros after the decimal but you never need leading zeros on a whole number. That is, we write “4” not “004″ but if the number is “0.004” there is no compressed way of writing that out. In book keeping, it’s typical to keep everything right-aligned but it makes adding up and comparing magnitudes easier, so you’ll also write trailing zeros that aren’t strictly necessary (that is $4.00 rather than just $4 if other prices you’re recording sometimes use those places).
This means if you have a large number of decimal places, book keeping is much more annoying and you have to be really careful about leading zeros. Entering in a price as “0.00003” is annoying and easy to mess up by an order of magnitude without noticing. Thus, having a decimalized currency with a really large base unit is a pain and there’s a natural tendency towards a base unit that allows a minimum subunit of 0.01 or so to be sensible.
Interesting question. The “base” unit is largely arbitrary, but the smallest subunit of a currency has more practical implications, so it may also help to think in those terms. Back in the day, you had all kinds of wonky fractions but now basically everyone is decimalized, and 1⁄100 is usually the smallest unit. I imagine then that the value of the cent is as important here as the value of the dollar.
Here’s a totally speculative theory based on that.
When we write numbers, we have to include any zeros after the decimal but you never need leading zeros on a whole number. That is, we write “4” not “004″ but if the number is “0.004” there is no compressed way of writing that out. In book keeping, it’s typical to keep everything right-aligned but it makes adding up and comparing magnitudes easier, so you’ll also write trailing zeros that aren’t strictly necessary (that is $4.00 rather than just $4 if other prices you’re recording sometimes use those places).
This means if you have a large number of decimal places, book keeping is much more annoying and you have to be really careful about leading zeros. Entering in a price as “0.00003” is annoying and easy to mess up by an order of magnitude without noticing. Thus, having a decimalized currency with a really large base unit is a pain and there’s a natural tendency towards a base unit that allows a minimum subunit of 0.01 or so to be sensible.