LOOSE CHANGE: MAY 2, 2021

The first coins were produced from white gold, an alloy also called electrum. Though they are small and irregular in shape, they bear a vast range of powerful visual images, executed in startling detail and with impressive plasticity.

To watch the video, see:
Animation Movie about the Invention of Coinage (https://www.academia.edu/video/kb2yqk)

The rise of the home computer industry in the late 1970s and early ‘80s helped lower the cost of owning personal computers, ensuring that tens of millions of Americans had digital portals in their homes by the end of the 20th century.

Yet by the turn of the 21st century, people were no longer tied to their in-home computers. Advances in microtechnology made owning portable laptops cheaper in the 1990s. And this led to the creation of even smaller tablets and increasingly powerful cellular phones, the latter able to do so much more than simply place and receive calls, by the 2000s.

Even while many in the coin hobby largely remained absent from the digital scene during the 1990s and early 2000s, it was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the new technology. Coin dealers realized the benefit of online technology and were creating interactive ecommerce portals to buy and sell coins over the internet. Third-party coin grading services also built online presences to make the submission of coins for authentication and grading easier, as well as to offer a host of other educational resources.

To read the complete article, see:
Coin Collecting and Investing In the New Digital Age (https://www.coinagemag.com/coin-collecting-and-investing-in-the-new-digital-age/)

British finance minister Rishi Sunak told the Bank of England on Monday to look at the case for a new "Britcoin", or central bank-backed digital currency, aimed at tackling some of the challenges posed by cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

A BoE-backed digital version of sterling would potentially allow businesses and consumers to hold accounts directly with the bank and to sidestep others when making payments, upending the lenders' role in the financial system.

"We're launching a new taskforce between the Treasury and the Bank of England to coordinate exploratory work on a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC)," Sunak told a financial industry conference.

Soon after, Sunak tweeted the single word "Britcoin" in reply to the finance ministry's announcement of the taskforce.

To read the complete article, see:
‘Britcoin' not bitcoin? UK considers new digital currency (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/uk-launches-taskforce-potential-bank-england-digital-currency-sunak-2021-04-19/)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web