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Comment by ardaozkal | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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?

> So you never know - but how would that work inside a metal coin?

That's a good point, I completely oversaw that.

I don't think it's entirely unfeasible, the entire coin could act as the antenna (instead of shielding one, that is).

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

I'm assuming it has an NFC tag or something similar... Can't wait to cut one open and look. :)

Yea, when I heard that, I immediately wondered if there was a tracking _feature_ in the coin.

How much would it cost, though? I mean if a pound coin costs more than a pound, that's not good (that's possible even with the dumb coins, I recently heard that the turkish one kurus costs two and a half turkish kurus).

(edit: when I say "cost" I mean the production cost)

Not necessarily -

Since most money is held in banks, electronic transactions, etc - the question is more the 'value of supporting this denomination in currency to the economy' than the cost of a coin.. Like of $100M USD worth of tax/federal reserve interest revenue is generated from $10M of $100 bills that cost $15M to produce, it's not really a loss, but a business expense...

It seems that cost-to-produce vs. face-value isn't a terribly important ratio. The US has continued making pennies for a lot longer than necessary, though it seems to cost ~1.5c to make them.

The 1 kurus was stopped being manufactured (still have one though: https://s.ave.zone/969.JPG )

Well, a pound coin is used more than once, and there is tax applied on every time it is used, so it'll pay off for itself in a relatively short timespan, imo. Plus, it pretty much beats counterfeits, so loss from that is gone too.

Problem with 1 kurus was that it wasn't used often, the monetary value was small and that it had no anti-counterfeit stuff. Also, people were melting it and selling it. You can't really sell a broken or write-protected rfid chip for much.

> (Turkish government recently switched IDs to something like that).

That’s actually quite an old idea – most european countries’ IDs just have a normal smartcard in them, allowing normal signing and verification.

Australian (NSW) drivers licenses actually have magnetic strips in them that cause interesting results in some credit card machines.

Interesting, I wonder if it's like the EMV credit cards. I wonder if this stuff is standardized, are the ID and credit card chips the same? Having the same readers would be useful, especially if all countries started doing that. Would be a little insane to have like a tower of card readers at like airports. "Oh your from America use the one in the middle" "Your from Canada use the one at the bottom."

If the same hardware, then I guess the only different would be that the public keys would be associated with somthing else. But it's probably a huge patent mess to make this a standard for all countries and states.

I know two stores in my area that don't even support chip cards and this was within going in the past year. One has the readers, but they don't work. The other has no chip readers at all.

I always thought paper signing was a bit outdated, especially since schools don't teach cursive really. We spent like a hour on it, and then next topic!

But then if someone stole your ID, lost it, etc... They could sign for things... but people can forge your signature anyways... Maybe if the machine had a camera in it to take a selfie when you use the card, but a bit creepy in a way to.

Yes, they are the same standard.

In Germany this is actually used in all cigarette or alcohol dispensers.

You can pay via EC card or via cash, but you first need to verify age via EC card or ID.

EC cards (kinda like debit cards) and ID cards have two age verification functions, of which only one per minute can be called, these just verify if the account holder is > 16 or > 18.

So you press the button to get a bottle of beer, the system checks if you’re 16, you pay, and you get it.

Or you press the button to get a bottle of vodka, the system checks if you’re 18, you pay, and you get it.

All this is standard tech, supported by any normal RFID or card reader, and you can use the same reader for secure home banking, for verification, etc.

Well, the standardization was covered by others, so here's stuff about forgery:

The Turkish Govt's new ID allows you to- no, it requires you to set a password. You are given an 8 character PIN code when you apply for the ID, and you can change it from the kiosks at the citizenship bureau. It allows between 4 and 16 characters (while I chose 16 myself, most people will choose a 4 character one :( ).

Plus, even if it gets stolen along with the password, technically the certificate can be revoked as soon as you report it, preventing forgery.

Maybe that is the "hidden feature" that they describe on the linked page.

Well people had been stating on this thread that if that was the hidden feature, it'd not be "hidden" for long as anyone can get and cut open a coin to see if there's anything like that inside.

Can't RFID chips to be copied though?

They can, depending on how they work. If the values are being fetched from a secure chip, however, I believe it's not as easy. And as I said, even if it is copied, unless it is spent VERY carefully, it can be spotted and marked as copied.

Here's mifare desfire EV2's leaflet that talks quite a bit about the security features it has: http://www.nxp.com/documents/leaflet/MIFARE-DESFire-EV2-Leaf...

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