Restricted Currency

A restricted currency is one that its own country's rules prevent from being freely traded, held or delivered outside that jurisdiction. The restriction is what defines the category, not the size of the economy behind it: a restricted currency can belong to a large economy and still be unavailable to a foreign counterparty with no permitted domestic reason to hold it. For anyone reading a broker's instrument list, this is often why a pair is missing. A restricted currency generally cannot be settled outside its home market, so a spot pair in it either does not exist for foreign clients or exists only as a cash-settled instrument that never delivers the currency itself. Where such pairs are quoted at all, they tend to carry wider spreads, quoting hours tied to the domestic session rather than the full trading week, and prices that can move independently of the domestic market. Which currencies are restricted, and in what way, is set by each jurisdiction and changes.