Shilling

The shilling 

is a unit of currency formerly used in Austria, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, United States, and other British Commonwealth countries. Currently the shilling is used as a currency in four east African countries: Kenya (Kenyan shilling), Tanzania (Tanzanian shilling), Uganda (Ugandan shilling), and Somalia (Somali shilling). It is also the proposed currency that the east African community plans to introduce (east African shilling). The word shilling comes from old English "Scilling", a monetary term meaning twentieth of a pound, and from the Proto-Germanic root *skiljaną meaning 'to separate.' The word "Scilling" is mentioned in the earliest recorded Germanic law codes, those of Æthelberht of Kent.

Slang terms for the old shilling coins include "bob" and "hog". While the derivation of "bob" is uncertain, John Camden Hotten in his 1864 Slang Dictionary says the original version was "bobstick" and wonders if it is connected with Sir Robert Walpole.^[1]

One abbreviation for shilling is s (for solidus, see £sd). Often it was represented by a solidus symbol ("/"), which may have originally stood for a long s or ſ,^[2] thus 1/9 would be one shilling and ninepence (and equivalent to 21d; the shilling itself was equal to 12d). A price with no pence was sometimes written with a solidus and a dash: 11/–.

The solidus symbol is still used for the Kenyan shilling (one of the successors to East African shilling), rather than sh.

During the Great Recoinage of 1816, the mint was instructed to coin one troy pound (weighing 5760 grains or 373 g) of standard (0.925 fine) silver into 66 shillings, or its equivalent in other denominations. This set the weight of the shilling, and its subsequent decimal replacement 5 new pence coin, at 87.2727 grains or 5.655 grams from 1816 until 1990, when a new smaller 5p coin was introduced.

In the past, the English world^{[clarification needed]} has had various myths about the shilling. One myth was that it was deemed to be the value of a cow 

in Kent or a sheep 

elsewhere.

Financial Analyst Gary Shilling Shorts Bitcoin: It’s a ‘Grand Ponzi Scheme’

Shilling told CNBC that he’s troubled by the opaque nature of the crypto industry. Specifically, he’s concerned that the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto — the inventor of bitcoin — has never been revealed.

The veteran investor is also skeptical of the claim that there’s a fixed supply of the cryptocurrency. “There’s supposedly a limit on there, but where is it written in stone that that can’t increase?” Shilling wondered.

“And of course, the electricity that’s churned out by the miners trying to solve these algorithms is just extraordinary.”

Shilling is a notorious crypto skeptic, as CCN has reported. In October 2017, he admitted that he does not understand bitcoin and dismissed it as a “black box” (i.e., a complex investment model).

* Wall Street Analyst Gary Shilling: I Don’t Understand Bitcoin


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