yes, that's exaclty right.
nothing to do with conversion of currency, more to do with naming conventions.
US (short scale measurements)
1,000 - thousand
1,000,000 - million
1,000,000,000 - billion
1,000,000,000,000 - trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000 - quadrillion
UK
1,000 - thousand
1,000,000 - million
1,000,000,000 - milliard
1,000,000,000,000 - billion
1,000,000,000,000,000 - thousand billion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - thousand trillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - quadrillion
(as you can see, a UK billion is 1 thousand times bigger than a US one.
a UK trillion is a million times bigger than a US one
and a quadrillion is a thousand million/milliard/billion times bigger than a US depending on what name you give to the number 1 followed by nine zeros)
In other news, a pint in the UK is also bigger than a pint in the US.
1 us pint = 473 ml
1 uk pint = 568 ml
So our pint are almost a pint and a quarter of your pints.
which is also why when someone in the US says, I drank ten pints, people in the UK say what really, because that's the same as us only drinking 8 pints.
in someone in the UK drinks ten pints, that's like someone in the us drinking 12 pints.
our beer in stronger too... but that's a different story.