Bit (money)

Categories: United States coins

The bit is a unit of money worth 1/8 of a Spanish dollar.

The term derives from the practice of cutting a Spanish dollar, or peso, into eight radial slices to make change. Each of these pieces was called a bit, and equal in value to a Spanish reale ("royal").

The term persists colloquially in the US as a holdover from Colonial America when the Spanish dollar was the widest circulating coin due to the millions being minted in Mexico, Bolivia and other Spanish colonies. It was deemed equivalent in value to an American dollar. Thus twenty-five cents was dubbed two-bits, as it was a quarter of a Spanish dollar. Correspondingly, the terms four-bits and six-bits referred to fifty and seventy-five cents.

Because there was no one-bit coin, a dime (10c) was sometimes called a short bit and 15c a long bit.

Gimme six bits' worth o'ticket

On a train that runs somewhere…

(Langston Hughes, Six-Bits Blues)

The New York Stock Exchange continued to list stock prices in eighths of a dollar until June 24, 1997, at which time it started listing in sixteenths. It did not fully implement decimal listing until January 29, 2001, according to the research staff at the NYSE.

From 1905 to 1917, the Danish West Indies used stamps denominated in bits and francs with 100 bits to the franc; the lowest value was 5 bits.