A better explanation is Lindybeige's video about pre-decimal British coinage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2paSGQRwvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2paS

A better explanation is Lindybeige's video about pre-decimal British coinage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2paSGQRwvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2paSGQRwvo It goes into the underlying mindset behind this seemingly bizarre system. Basically: - the penny was always the fundamental unit. every denomination was defined in terms of the penny, not the pound or the shilling. It wasn't like the modern system where the fundamental unit is the pound (or dollar) and pennies (or cents) are defined as hundredths. - the system was evolved, not designed - different multiples and fractions of the penny went in and out of fashion at various times, so at any given time the system wasn't quite complicated as you might think, even though in retrospect it can be hard to keep track of every denomination from every period - the shilling (12 pence) and the pound (240 pence) stuck around and became important denominations because those are highly-composite numbers and so have lots of ways of splitting them up And this isn't stated explicitly in the video but it seems the system lost its value due to inflation, not any desire for metrication. Nobody gave a damn about pennies by the late 60s. You could very well make a new version of "old money" with modern coinage, just inflated by a factor of 100. A neo-shilling = 12 dollars, etc. Could be a fun cyberpunk worldbuilding detail.