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One of the most esoteric origin stories links it back to the Bohemian thaler, which featured a serpent on a Christian cross. That itself was an allusion to the story of Moses winding a bronze snake around a pole in order to cure people who’d been bitten. The dollar, so it’s said, derived from that sign.
Yet another version centres on the Pillars of Hercules, a phrase conjured up by the Ancient Greeks to describe the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The pillars feature in Spain’s national coat of arms and, during the 18th and 19th Centuries, appeared on the Spanish dollar, which was otherwise known as the piece of eight, or peso. The pillars have banners twined around them in an S-shape and it doesn’t take much squinting to see a resemblance to the dollar sign.