Counter Currency

You made a decision to travel to France...for some reason. Maybe because you wanted to be judged by people when you arrived at your destination. Or maybe you wanted people to act passive-aggressively toward you simply because of where you were born. Or maybe you like when people make gross generalizations about you simply because you were born between an arbitrary set of borders (no need for us Shmoop writers to have any moment of self-reflection, thank you.)

Well, when you are gearing up to visit France, you have a bunch of American currency in your grasp. You decide that you’re going to sell your U.S. dollars and buy euros (since France no longer uses the franc.)

The USD is the base currency, while the euro is the counter currency in the transaction.