4 ms·

For a moment I thought/hoped the UK would introduce an official cryptocurrency...

mattcoles 10y ago
As if. Our goverment is currently on the warpath against evil cryptography.
tonyonodi 10y ago
Yesterday our home secretary said that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is "completely unacceptable". So we're a long way away from that.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  Hasn't UK been fighting encryption since at least the 90's ?
  - ollie87 10y ago
    Aye. We should just go back to using the Royal Mail.
    - UweSchmidt 10y ago
      Wouldn't be surprised if the surveillance infrastructure for physical mail started deteriorating already and a beautiful handcrafted, scented letter with calligraphy could fly under the radar.
  - Noughmad 10y ago
    To be honest, they have been fighting encryption since the 30's.
    - arethuza 10y ago
      Public key encryption was actually first thought of at GCHQ - but was you would expect they kept it secret: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography#Classified_discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography#Classi...
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    So has the US: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/97690/MIT-CSAIL-TR-2015-026.pdf https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/97690/MIT-CSA...
- ProblemFactory 10y ago
  A government cryptocurrency could be built on a blockchain, but there is really little point. Some properties that it would need are: * It's backed by usual pounds by the treasury, which means only they get to issue new coins (no public mining rewards). * Court judgements must be able to block, reverse or force transactions. This means either the government gets a copy of all private keys, or simply has master keys for the system. * UK government would probably want to attach names to all accounts, so new wallets could probably be only generated on some gov.uk site, or participating businesses like existing banks. In the end, the blockchain is wasteful and inefficient when you could just have a big-ass server somewhere with an API.
  - deno 10y ago
    > * Court judgements must be able to block, reverse or force transactions. This means either the government gets a copy of all private keys, or simply has master keys for the system. You can certainly avoid that, just make it part of the protocol. You could create currency with such rules on top of Ethereum today. Court judgments simply become a part of trusted oracle.
ubernostrum 10y ago
Compared to the "It's a day ending in 'y', so a cryptocurrency or a cryptocurrency exchange probably got hacked today" pattern, I'll take the physical coin.
- rublev 10y ago
  Poe's law is failing me here.
lovemenot 10y ago
... and call it britcoin.
- pknerd 10y ago
  > and call it britcoin. BrexitCoin
  - lovemenot 10y ago
    Not Brexit, just a hard fork.
bigbugbag 10y ago
Reading the title that's exactly what I expected, discovering that it was simply a redesign of an actual coin was a let down. I guess this is related to the UK being close to falling apart due to brexit.
- simonbarker87 10y ago
  Lol, how is the UK close to falling apart? Do you mean literally that the union is falling apart or more figuratively speaking that the country is unravelling?
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Odds are increased that Scotland will eventually go for independence. Northern Ireland is closer than ever to a Republican majority in Stormont and speculations are on the rise that a border poll might be on the table in the near future (as in within not too many years; it will still take time) and even some unionists appears to accept that there is a greater than ever chance of a unified Ireland. More importantly: at least some unionists appears more accepting of that possibility, as they see Brexit as yet another example of Norther Irelands concerns being ignored - how the negotiations unfolds will potentially have a dramatic effect on the Northern Ireland issue as a result. Irrespective of that, it's pretty clear that Brexit will force Westminster into promising drastically increased levels of devolution not just to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but also to the major urban regions like Greater Manchester and Greater London that will reduce the de facto power of Westminster dramatically and allow the regions to drift even more apart in terms of differences in public policy. At the same time there is a major split amongst those who considers themselves predominantly or only British or who considers themselves British first vs. those who predominantly see themselves as English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish first, and British second or not at all, with "Britishness" being weak and fractured. Basically, to a lot of people living here, the UK means as little or even less than the EU, compared to other parts of their identity. And a lot of the political discourse has been around how the elites ignore people. What people are about to find out is that in that respect the London elite were the ones ignoring them, not Brussels, and accordingly Brexit will not solve any of the problems they had in that respect. Expect to see increasing upheaval and pressure for more power to be devolved from Westminster as a result. E.g. after the Brexit vote there was a brief flash of people talking about pushing for independence for London, and while that won't happen anytime soon if ever, expect to see those debates flash up again and lead to an actual (if miniscule) political movement at some point over the next couple of years. I personally think that while the UK may persist in some form, the UK 10 years from now is reasonably likely to exclude Scotland, and the UK 30 years from now is likely to exclude Northern Ireland, and be more like a loose federation with massively devolved powers to Wales and several English regions and at least Manchester and London. Maybe even with increasing support for Welsh independence.
ardaozkal 10y ago
I kinda hoped that they'd include something like an RFID chip with something like a certificate inside, signed by the royal mint (Turkish government recently switched IDs to something like that). That'd allow verifying every single new coin (unless it is damaged to the level of breaking the rfid chip, but I suppose that's not that easy). It'd also enable tracking. I kinda regret that idea now. BUT if used responsibly, that can significantly reduce the counterfeiting by the means of somehow cloning the RFID chip (which wouldn't be simple if done properly -- there aren't any successful attacks on proper implementations of stuff like mifare desfire EV1/EV2 afaik). A coin was used on a market on london on 10am and with an ATM on Glasgow on 10:30am? Yeah, flag that coin down.
- mbrookes 10y ago
  "Hidden high security feature – a high security feature is built into the coin to protect it from counterfeiting in the future." So you never know - but how would that work inside a metal coin?
  - ardaozkal 10y ago
    > So you never know - but how would that work inside a metal coin? That's a good point, I completely oversaw that.
    - blacksmith_tb 10y ago
      I don't think it's entirely unfeasible, the entire coin could act as the antenna (instead of shielding one, that is).
  - corobo 10y ago
    Supposedly the super secret bonus prize is embedded luminescent particles[1], if you fancy reading about what that is [1] https://www.google.com/patents/US20110305919 https://www.google.com/patents/US20110305919
  - Daviey 10y ago
    I'm assuming it has an NFC tag or something similar... Can't wait to cut one open and look. :)

As if. Our goverment is currently on the warpath against evil cryptography.

Yesterday our home secretary said that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is "completely unacceptable". So we're a long way away from that.

bigbugbag 10y ago
Hasn't UK been fighting encryption since at least the 90's ?
- ollie87 10y ago
  Aye. We should just go back to using the Royal Mail.
  - UweSchmidt 10y ago
    Wouldn't be surprised if the surveillance infrastructure for physical mail started deteriorating already and a beautiful handcrafted, scented letter with calligraphy could fly under the radar.
- Noughmad 10y ago
  To be honest, they have been fighting encryption since the 30's.
  - arethuza 10y ago
    Public key encryption was actually first thought of at GCHQ - but was you would expect they kept it secret: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography#Classified_discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography#Classi...
- djsumdog 10y ago
  So has the US: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/97690/MIT-CSAIL-TR-2015-026.pdf https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/97690/MIT-CSA...
ProblemFactory 10y ago
A government cryptocurrency could be built on a blockchain, but there is really little point. Some properties that it would need are: * It's backed by usual pounds by the treasury, which means only they get to issue new coins (no public mining rewards). * Court judgements must be able to block, reverse or force transactions. This means either the government gets a copy of all private keys, or simply has master keys for the system. * UK government would probably want to attach names to all accounts, so new wallets could probably be only generated on some gov.uk site, or participating businesses like existing banks. In the end, the blockchain is wasteful and inefficient when you could just have a big-ass server somewhere with an API.
- deno 10y ago
  > * Court judgements must be able to block, reverse or force transactions. This means either the government gets a copy of all private keys, or simply has master keys for the system. You can certainly avoid that, just make it part of the protocol. You could create currency with such rules on top of Ethereum today. Court judgments simply become a part of trusted oracle.

ubernostrum 10y ago

Compared to the "It's a day ending in 'y', so a cryptocurrency or a cryptocurrency exchange probably got hacked today" pattern, I'll take the physical coin.

rublev 10y ago
Poe's law is failing me here.

lovemenot 10y ago

... and call it britcoin.

pknerd 10y ago
> and call it britcoin. BrexitCoin
- lovemenot 10y ago
  Not Brexit, just a hard fork.

bigbugbag 10y ago

Reading the title that's exactly what I expected, discovering that it was simply a redesign of an actual coin was a let down. I guess this is related to the UK being close to falling apart due to brexit.

simonbarker87 10y ago
Lol, how is the UK close to falling apart? Do you mean literally that the union is falling apart or more figuratively speaking that the country is unravelling?
- vidarh 10y ago
  Odds are increased that Scotland will eventually go for independence. Northern Ireland is closer than ever to a Republican majority in Stormont and speculations are on the rise that a border poll might be on the table in the near future (as in within not too many years; it will still take time) and even some unionists appears to accept that there is a greater than ever chance of a unified Ireland. More importantly: at least some unionists appears more accepting of that possibility, as they see Brexit as yet another example of Norther Irelands concerns being ignored - how the negotiations unfolds will potentially have a dramatic effect on the Northern Ireland issue as a result. Irrespective of that, it's pretty clear that Brexit will force Westminster into promising drastically increased levels of devolution not just to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but also to the major urban regions like Greater Manchester and Greater London that will reduce the de facto power of Westminster dramatically and allow the regions to drift even more apart in terms of differences in public policy. At the same time there is a major split amongst those who considers themselves predominantly or only British or who considers themselves British first vs. those who predominantly see themselves as English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish first, and British second or not at all, with "Britishness" being weak and fractured. Basically, to a lot of people living here, the UK means as little or even less than the EU, compared to other parts of their identity. And a lot of the political discourse has been around how the elites ignore people. What people are about to find out is that in that respect the London elite were the ones ignoring them, not Brussels, and accordingly Brexit will not solve any of the problems they had in that respect. Expect to see increasing upheaval and pressure for more power to be devolved from Westminster as a result. E.g. after the Brexit vote there was a brief flash of people talking about pushing for independence for London, and while that won't happen anytime soon if ever, expect to see those debates flash up again and lead to an actual (if miniscule) political movement at some point over the next couple of years. I personally think that while the UK may persist in some form, the UK 10 years from now is reasonably likely to exclude Scotland, and the UK 30 years from now is likely to exclude Northern Ireland, and be more like a loose federation with massively devolved powers to Wales and several English regions and at least Manchester and London. Maybe even with increasing support for Welsh independence.

ardaozkal 10y ago

I kinda hoped that they'd include something like an RFID chip with something like a certificate inside, signed by the royal mint (Turkish government recently switched IDs to something like that). That'd allow verifying every single new coin (unless it is damaged to the level of breaking the rfid chip, but I suppose that's not that easy). It'd also enable tracking. I kinda regret that idea now. BUT if used responsibly, that can significantly reduce the counterfeiting by the means of somehow cloning the RFID chip (which wouldn't be simple if done properly -- there aren't any successful attacks on proper implementations of stuff like mifare desfire EV1/EV2 afaik). A coin was used on a market on london on 10am and with an ATM on Glasgow on 10:30am? Yeah, flag that coin down.

mbrookes 10y ago
"Hidden high security feature – a high security feature is built into the coin to protect it from counterfeiting in the future." So you never know - but how would that work inside a metal coin?
- ardaozkal 10y ago
  > So you never know - but how would that work inside a metal coin? That's a good point, I completely oversaw that.
  - blacksmith_tb 10y ago
    I don't think it's entirely unfeasible, the entire coin could act as the antenna (instead of shielding one, that is).
- corobo 10y ago
  Supposedly the super secret bonus prize is embedded luminescent particles[1], if you fancy reading about what that is [1] https://www.google.com/patents/US20110305919 https://www.google.com/patents/US20110305919
- Daviey 10y ago
  I'm assuming it has an NFC tag or something similar... Can't wait to cut one open and look. :)