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With Christmas over it is time for me to take a short breath and be thankful for all that I have and try to remember that I am only the custodian of these worldy goods. Each year about this time, I make my New Year resolutions, but before I do that yet again I will take a look back and see how many times I failed last year.

This paper outlines a practical method of working out the true cost of producing PCBs which, with the addition of profit margins, will give the selling price. Following a brief reference to various ‘rule of thumb’ methods, the paper will examine the labour, material and overhead cost associated with each particular process operation, the planning of a suitable costing and will cover all the important parmeters with the accent on simplicity. Performance levels are assessed together with the question of quality.

The Third Cahners Exposition Awards Dinner was held on Wednesday 17th October, 1984, in the Cameo Room, Metropole Hotel, during the course of the Internepcon Exhibition.

Held in the Cameo Room of the Metropole Hotel, Brighton, on the evening of 9th October, the Cahners Gala Awards Dinner sponsored by Electronics Weekly was attended by over 200 guests. Mr A. B. Nolan, Director Cahners Exhibitions Ltd, in welcoming those present to the 4th Annual Awards Dinner, explained that Internepcon was 18 years old; 31 of the original 54 exhibitors were still supporting the event, and the total number of exhibitors in 1985 amounted to 420.

Two week course commencing Monday, 25th October to Friday, 29th October, 1982 and continuing on Monday, 1st November to Friday, 5th November, 1982.

Since its advent in 1983, Circuit Technology has gone from strength to strength, as indicated by visitor attendance which increased from 3000 in 1983 to over 6000 in 1984. Predictions are that, with the larger venue at Olympia's National Hall, previous attendance figures will be exceeded many times at Circuit Technology '85.

The Institute of Circuit Technology's Annual Symposium, which took place on 12–13 May 1987, returned this year to Brunel University, Uxbridge, where it had last been held in June 1984.

Over the past year in particular, ICT courses have been going from strength to strength, with ever increasing attendance and interest in the topical subject areas offered.

The Annual Fall Symposium took place on 11–12 November, 1985, at the Marriott‐LAX Hotel, Los Angeles, focusing on the theme: ‘PC Technology: Materials, Processes and Requirements for Entry to the '90s’.

Cryptoassets have recently attracted the attention of national and international financial regulators. Since the mid-2010s blockchains have increasingly been adapted to automate and replace many aspects of financial intermediation, and by 2015 Ethereum had created the smart contract language that underpins the digitization of real assets as asset-backed tokens (ABTs). Those were initially issued by FinTech companies, but more recently banks active on international capital and financial markets, and even central banks, for example, the Bank of Thailand, have developed their own digital platforms and blockchains. A wide variety of real and financial assets underpins ABTs, viz., real-estate, art, corporate and sovereign bonds, and equity. Consequently, owing to the significant market capitalization of cryptocurrencies, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) published two consultative papers delineating its approach on cryptoasset regulation. In this study, the authors analyze the mechanics of ABTs and their potential risks, relying on case studies of recent issuance of tokens in equity, real-estate, and debt markets, to highlight their main characteristics. The authors also investigate the consequences of the increasingly oligopolistic structure of blockchain mining pools and Bitcoin exchanges for the integrity and security of unregulated distributed ledgers. Finally, the authors analyze the BCBS’ regulatory proposals, and discuss the reaction of international financial institutions and cryptocurrency interest groups. The main findings are, firstly, that most ABTs are akin to asset-backed securities. Secondly, nearly all ABTs are “off-chain/on-chain,” that is, the underlying is a traditional asset that exists off-chain and is subsequently digitized. The main exception is the World Bank’s bond-i that is genuinely native to the blockchain created by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and has no existence outside it. Thirdly, all ABTs are issued on permissioned blockchains, where anti-money laundering/anti-terrorist funding and know-your-customer regulations are enforced. From a prudential regulatory perspective, ABTs do not appear to pose serious systemic risks to international financial markets. This may account for the often negative reactions of banks, banking associations, and cryptocurrency interest groups to the BCBS’ 2021 proposals for risk-weighted capital provisions for cryptoassets, which are viewed as excessive. Finally, we found that issuance of ABTS and other smart contracts on permissionless blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum could potentially generate financial instability. A precedent involving Ethereum and The DAO in 2016 shows that (i) there is a significant accountability gap in permissionless blockchains, and (ii) the core developers of blockchains and smart contract technology, and Bitcoin mining pools, exercise an unexpectedly high- and completely unregulated-amount of power in what is supposedly a decentralized network.