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A reliable medium of exchange is the biggest obstacle to Scottish independence. Enter the world's leading crypto-coinage.With Thursday's Scottish independence referendum too close to call, opponents of an independent Scotland have been stressing the would-be country's lack of a reliable currency. An independent Scotland could either keep using the British pound and lose control of its monetary policy, join the eurozone's well-known squabbles, or create a new national currency that's almost certain to be weak. But there's an intriguing fourth option: adopting an online crypto-currency such as Bitcoin. Scotland actually has some historical experience with this sort of thing: Instead...

EDINBURGH—If Scottish nationalists win independence from Britain in this week’s referendum, they will owe at least some thanks to an unlikely ally: the late, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The current Scottish referendum on independence, coming down to a too-close-to-call finish on Thursday, has reignited the fire under Scotland’s long-standing resistance to Conservatism in Britain, especially the Thatcher brand of the 1970s and 1980s. “I came over to independence as a result of Thatcher,” says Douglas Campbell, a 65-year-old Yes campaigner who showed up at a canvassing push near Scotland’s Parliament in Edinburgh on the last Sunday of the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Next week’s referendum on Scottish independence has largely flown under the radar screen here in the United States. The cable news networks have devoted little attention so far to the issue, as the Isil threat in the Middle East continues to dominate international coverage. There has been no polling conducted on the Scottish question in the US, and it is doubtful that many Americans outside of the Washington policy bubble or the financial milieu of New York are particularly exercised by the outcome of a vote taking place over 3,000 miles away. They should be concerned, however. What happens in...

Global "supervillain" Henry Kissinger has spoken out on the Scottish independence debate, telling Prospect Magazine that "anything that makes Britain smaller I do not welcome". Yet the former US Secretary of State is not the only nefarious character to offer council on the issue of ScotlandÂ’s proposed breakaway from the UK. Some of the globeÂ’s most "black hated" antagonists have ruminated on the delicate matter of the British Union, with support falling on both sides of the fence. Here are 7 of the world's elite "supervillains" that have also chimed in on the referendum: Rupert Murdoch: When not denying man...

Film star Sean Connery is urging fellow Scots to vote for independence when a referendum is held in September. The longtime independence advocate says in The Sun on Sunday newspaper that the opportunity to separate from the rest of Britain is too good an opportunity to miss. He says independence would galvanize the film and creative industries, creating new jobs in Scotland. Connery no longer lives there and said the decision should be made by the people who choose to live and work in Scotland. He said a vote for independence would bring renewed focus on Scottish culture, heritage and...