[Symbiote]

The first point is just because of the keys on a keyboard.

I see many uses of "pounds" or "GBP" on HN. Anyone with the symbol on the keyboard (British and Irish obviously, plus several other European countries) types £. When people use a phone keyboard, and a long-press or symbol view shows $, £ and €, they can choose £.

Danish people use ½ and § (and £). These keys are labelled on the standard Danish Windows keyboard.

There's plenty of scope for implementing enough Unicode to support most Latin-like languages without going as far as supporting vertical or RTL text.