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Comment by zahllos | Hacker News Reader

Aside from electronic waste, if you ever happen to be in South Wales you can visit the Royal Mint and it is quite fascinating.

They strike coins not just for the UK but also quite a few other nations. They also make the precursor alloy mixes for quite a few more nations, who then only do the striking part for their national currency. All in all, there is a possibility your nation's coins may have in part been made there.

The exhibition they have explains it better than I can and you can see out onto part of the factory floor. I also got to strike a coin... Well... The machine struck it but I pressed "please strike it". So. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon if you are there.

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Do you know what nations they mint coins for? I can’t seem to find that information.

> but also quite a few other nations

That's a surprising amount of trust

If they can provide better anti-forgery protections then why not?

one reason would be the UK dumping forged money perhaps through 3rd parties? (i.e. like the Switzerland sold compromised crypto machines)

The kind of thing you only get to do once.

Well, maybe not entirely. War is an exception: http://www.psywarrior.com/BritishForgeriesWWI.html vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard (Nazi Germany forging British notes)

I don’t think any amount of coin ‘forgery’ the UK could possible achieve would be worth the effort, let alone the reputational cost when discovered.

Yes I agree.

It also costs money to make money. Minting coins isn't free: you need the right cupronickel mix or whatever they're using so that the coin matches specifications. This is an industrial process like any other.

Also not all of the countries ask the mint to actually mint. They're buying "flans" i.e. coin shaped metal that hasn't been struck yet, just prepared according to spec. They strike the coins themselves.

As others have noted I think it really also depends what your domestic situation is, i.e. can the whole process be done in a cost effective and safe way where you are? If not... This is just the cloud but for country tokens ;)

Another British company makes banknotes for "over 69 national currencies" [1].

From the website [2] I can see England, Gibraltar, Seychelles, Macedonia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Solomon Islands, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Fiji, São Tomé e Príncipe, ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_La_Rue

[2] https://www.delarue.com/currency/overview?hsLang=en-gb

What happens when the trust was not worth it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis

Not really. The Royal Mint doesn't even make the British Banknotes, they're made by a company in France.

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