A coin is a piece of hard material used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by a government.
Coins are usually metal or alloy, or sometimes made of synthetic materials. They are usually disc shaped. Coins made of valuable metal are stored in large quantities as bullion coins. Other coins are used as money in everyday transactions, circulating alongside banknotes. Usually the highest value coin in circulation (i.e. excluding bullion coins) is worth less than the lowest-value note. In the last hundred years, the face value of circulation coins has occasionally been lower than the value of the metal they contain, for example due to inflation. If the difference becomes significant, the issuing authority may decide to withdraw these coins from circulation, or the public may decide to melt the coins down or hoard them (see Gresham's law).
Exceptions to the rule of face value being higher than content value also occur for some bullion coins made of silver or gold (and, rarely, other metals, such as platinum or palladium), intended for collectors or investors in precious metals. Examples of modern gold collector/investor coins include the British sovereign minted by the United Kingdom, the American Gold Eagle minted by the United States, the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf minted by Canada, and the Krugerrand, minted by South Africa. While the Eagle, Maple Leaf, and Sovereign coins have nominal (purely symbolic) face values; the Krugerrand does not.
37coins was a bitcoin wallet provider headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company launched on December 31, 2013, and announced its closing August 12, 2015. The company created bitcoin technologies for emerging markets such as the Philippines and Singapore, where access to smartphone and desktop PC apps is limited.
Users of 37coins could send and receive bitcoins to their bitcoin wallets, called SMSwallets. The SMSwallets were controlled by SMS/text commands sent from simple feature phones, such as a Nokia 100. Using the system, bitcoins could be sent and received from any bitcoin wallets.
The company developed an SMS gateway system, called SMSgateway. It was an android application that ran on Android phones and connect a country's local SMS network to the internet. By relaying messages between the SMSwallets and the 37coins server, gateway operators earned a small commission from each transaction that passed through their gateway. There were gateways in over 18 countries.
The Combined Online Information System (COINS) is a database containing HM Treasury's detailed analysis of departmental spending under thousands of category headings. The database contains around 24 million lines of data. The database has codes for more than 1,700 public bodies in the United Kingdom including central government departments, local authorities, NHS trusts and public corporations. COINS is used by the Office for National Statistics for statistical purposes.
The Treasury describes the database as "a web based multi-dimensional database used by HM Treasury to collect financial information". Data from the COINS database is used to prepare the National Accounts.
The Combined Online Information System or COINS database is one of the biggest datasets in government. COINS uses a database called Camelot. The system is supplied by Descisys.
COINS replaced three separate systems previously used by the British Government, Public Expenditure System (PES), Government Online Data System (GOLD) and General Expenditure Monitoring System (GEMS).
Crypto or Krypto may refer to:
Crypto1 is a proprietary encryption algorithm created by NXP Semiconductors specifically for Mifare RFID tags, including Oyster card, CharlieCard and OV-chipkaart.
Recent cryptographic research has shown that, "the security of this cipher is ... close to zero". Crypto1 is a stream cipher very similar in its structure to its successor, Hitag2. Crypto1 consists of
It can operate as an NLFSR and as an LFSR, depending on its input parameters. Outputs of one or both linear and nonlinear functions can be fed back into the cipher state or used as its output filters. The usual operation of Crypto1 and Hitag2 ciphers uses nonlinear feedback only during the initialization/authentication stage, switching to operation as LFSR with a nonlinear output filter for encrypting the tag's communications in both directions.
A bank is a financial institution that creates credit by lending money to a borrower, thereby creating a corresponding deposit on the bank's balance sheet. Lending activities can be performed either directly or indirectly through capital markets. Due to their importance in the financial system and influence on national economies, banks are highly regulated in most countries. Most nations have institutionalized a system known as fractional reserve banking under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, known as the Basel Accords.
Banking in its modern sense evolved in the 14th century in the rich cities of Renaissance Italy but in many ways was a continuation of ideas and concepts of credit and lending that had their roots in the ancient world. In the history of banking, a number of banking dynasties — notably, the Medicis, the Fuggers, the Welsers, the Berenbergs and the Rothschilds — have played a central role over many centuries. The oldest existing retail bank is Monte dei Paschi di Siena, while the oldest existing merchant bank is Berenberg Bank.
A rampart in fortification architecture is a length of bank or wall forming part of the defensive boundary of a castle, hillfort, settlement or other fortified site. It is usually broad-topped and made of excavated earth or masonry or a combination of the two.
Many types of early fortification, from prehistory through to the Early Middle Ages, employed earth ramparts usually in combination with external ditches to defend the outer perimeter of a fortified site or settlement.Hillforts, ringforts or "raths" and ringworks all made use of ditch and rampart defences, and of course they are the characteristic feature of circular ramparts. The ramparts could be reinforced and raised in height by the use of palisades. This type of arrangement was a feature of the motte and bailey castle of northern Europe in the early medieval period.
The composition and design of ramparts varied from the simple mounds of earth and stone, known as dump ramparts, to more complex earth and timber defences (box ramparts and timberlaced ramparts), as well as ramparts with stone revetments. One particular type, common in Central Europe, used earth, stone and timber posts to form a Pfostenschlitzmauer or "post-slot wall". Vitrified ramparts were composed of stone that was subsequently fired, possibly to increase its strength.