Why does US currency have a 25 cent piece and a 20 dollar bill instead of a 20 cent piece or 25 dollar bill?

Question

Why does US currency have a 25 cent piece instead of a 20 cent piece? Why is there a 20 dollar bill instead of a 25 dollar bill? Why aren't both denominations the same, 20 or 25 for both the dollars and cents?

Answer 1

As to the 25 cent piece the original colonial coins were fractions of 1/2. So we had a half dollar which if cut in have became a quarter dollar. I believe this was based on the English system of coins. I have visited historical sites where they demonstrated getting change by having your coin cut in half.

My hypothesis on the dollar denominations is that it was based more on the decimal system so that we had 1's and 10's and then half of $10 and twice $10.