What is a Universal Currency? As the phrase implies, it is a currency that is meant to be accepted everywhere. It would be the result of agreements among the different governments of the world to use one system of money. Think of it as the compulsory euro for all nations across continents The first U.S. dollar was printed in 1914 after the Federal Reserve Bank was created
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The Allies paid the U.S. for supplies in gold during World War I, propelling the U.S. to become the largest holder of gold.
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Countries pegged their currencies to the dollar after the war, ending the gold standard.
(3) The International Monetary Fund reported that 59% of all foreign bank reserves are denominated in U.S. dollars.
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Despite its position in the global markets, the U.S. isn’t the strongest world currency, ranking 10th on the list.
The first U.S. dollar (USD) is one of the world’s strongest currencies. It is the official currency of the United States as well as several other countries. Although it has a deep-rooted history in the United States, the dollar as we know it today was first printed in 1914.

The Gold Standard
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 created the Federal Reserve Bank to respond to the unreliability and instability of a currency system that was previously based on banknotes issued by individual banks. This was the same time that the U.S. economy became the world’s largest, surpassing that of the United Kingdom. World commerce still centered around the U.K., though, as the majority of transactions took place in British pounds.

The majority of developed countries pegged their currencies to gold as a way to stabilize currency exchanges. But when World War I broke out in 1914, many countries suspended their use of the gold standard to pay their military expenses with paper money, which devalued their currencies. Britain, though, held to the gold standard to maintain its position as the world’s leading currency and found itself borrowing money for the first time during the third year of the war.
The United States became the lender of choice for many countries that wanted to buy dollar-denominated U.S. bonds. Britain finally abandoned the gold standard in 1931, which decimated the bank accounts of international merchants who traded in pounds.

By then, the dollar replaced the pound as the leading international reserve currency. The U.S. Dollar Becomes the World’s Reserve Currency
The U.S dollar was officially crowned the world’s reserve currency and was backed by the world’s largest gold reserves thanks to the Bretton Woods Agreement. Instead of gold reserves, other countries accumulated reserves of U.S. dollars.
Needing a place to store their dollars, countries began buying U.S. Treasury securities, which they considered to be a safe store of money.