Bob T said
That’s not what Dave Wilton’s site said and it’s also just not true. I’m sure I contributed to more than one thread on here about that misconception.
The fanciful idea about cutting a dollar-sized silver coin, such as the 8-real of Spain, into smaller pieces for change just isn’t supported by the evidence. First, the Spanish struck denominations of 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, and 8 reals. . The 2 real was equal to about a quarter dollar in US money. It was called “two bits”, where “bit” referred to a small thing. If the practice of cutting silver dollar sized coins into smaller pieces was prevalent, then one would expect a number of these small pieces to exist. They don’t.