The UK Government has announced it’s getting into non-fungible tokens with the reveal of a planned ‘Royal Mint’ NFT for this summer. UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has asked the 136-year-old institution that makes the UK’s currency to come up with a new digital token to lead its “financial market infrastructure sandbox”, as the press release states.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has asked the Royal Mint – who mint legal tender coins for circulation in the United Kingdom, while the Bank of England prints banknotes – to create a non-fungible token (NFT) by the summer of 2022.
The UK government minting its own NFT is intended to ‘show the forward-looking approach we are determined to take towards cryptoassets in the UK’. Read the tweet here and some entertaining replies.
Popular crypto Twitter – ‘CT’ member @cobie, who is British, asked why it would take four months to mint one NFT and offered his assistance, almost ‘ratioing’ the post by getting more likes.
The announcement tweet was followed up shortly after by a second tweet, directing users toward additional information about the government’s plans “to make the UK a global cryptoasset hub”.
The page outlines several points in the Treasury’s plan, which include bringing “Stablecoins” (cryptoassets that are pegged to a reserve-asset, typically a fiat currency) into regulation, and legislation for a ‘financial market infrastructure sandbox’, to help firms innovate in the crypto space.” The Royal Mint NFT is intended to be “an emblem” of the UK’s “forward-looking approach” to cryptoassets.
It’s an…interesting time for the UK government to be announcing an NFT project. There is increasing evidence that the NFT craze is an unsustainable bubble, with Fortune reporting that the average sale price of an NFT dropped by over sixty percent between January and March, while the total market value of NFTs has dropped from $23 billion to $10 billion. This drop in value has likely been precipitated by the abundance of scams that have ravaged the reputation of NFTs – which, let’s face it, wasn’t exactly great to start with.
Not all reactions have been positive – NFTs and much of the public have a love / hate relationship. Some incredulous members of the British public asked what is an NFT exactly.
Left wing UK media outlet The Guardian criticized the Tory government for releasing an NFT during a time of increasing poverty and austerity. Non-fungible tokens are known as being some of the most expensive digital assets,
Some selling for millions of dollars (and pounds) at Sotheby’s auctions or online on popular NFT marketplaces such as Opensea.
