[akrasuski1]

It's done so that the bits will compare the same way whether treated as float or int. (modulo NaNs and stuff)

[nhaehnle]

That is only true for non-negative floating point numbers. It's still useful though.

Interestingly, posits as originally proposed do have this property (except for infinity).

[garmaine]

Would have been nice if IEEE stored the complement sign.