[UK] Government to create Royal Mint NFT

Earlier this week the Twitter account for Her Majesty’s Treasury @hmtreasury tweeted about plans in the works to create the very first Royal Mint NFT, Business 2 Community reports.

Rishi Sunak, the UK Chancellor, has asked the Royal Mint to create a non-fungible token (NFT) by the summer of 2022. The Royal Mint is responsible for minting legal tender coins for circulation in the United Kingdom and the Bank of England prints its banknotes.

In 2016, the Royal Mint reportedly announced the launch of a digitised token for trading gold called RMG (Royal Mint Gold). Each token was going to represent one gram of physical gold in a move intended to put the UK at the forefront of both blockchain innovation and the fledgling field of tokenised assets. The scheme went on to lose the support of its main partner - American financial market firm CME Group - and, according to reporting from The Fintech Times, it then disappeared from the agenda entirely.

The UK government taking the next step by minting its own NFT has been announced as a move intended to “show the forward-looking approach we are determined to take towards cryptoassets in the UK”. The full tweet (and the mixed responses it received) can be read here.

A prolific British crypto Twitter (CT) member @cobie asked why it would take four months to mint one NFT and offered his help, almost leading to the original post being ‘ratioed’ as he gained more likes.

Government-Backed NFT

The news of the Royal Mint NFT did not meet with a positive reception. The general public has a love/hate relationship with NFTs and many even questioned what exactly an NFT is.

The Guardian was critical of the timing, wondering why the Tory government would release an NFT in the wake of increasing poverty and austerity. NFTs are known to be among the most expensive digital assets with some selling for millions of pounds at Sotheby’s auctions or online on popular NFT marketplaces such as Opensea.

It’s yet known how valuable the Royal Mint NFT will be, what form it will take, whether NFT artists will be commissioned to produce it at the expense of the taxpayer and the level of detail of the artwork involved. No further details have been released.

A list of plans for the UK to regulate stablecoins and become a cryptoasset hub followed the announcement.

Source: Business 2 Community

(Links and quote via original reporting)

Earlier this week the Twitter account for Her Majesty’s Treasury @hmtreasury tweeted about plans in the works to create the very first Royal Mint NFT, Business 2 Community reports.

Rishi Sunak, the UK Chancellor, has asked the Royal Mint to create a non-fungible token (NFT) by the summer of 2022. The Royal Mint is responsible for minting legal tender coins for circulation in the United Kingdom and the Bank of England prints its banknotes.

In 2016, the Royal Mint reportedly announced the launch of a digitised token for trading gold called RMG (Royal Mint Gold). Each token was going to represent one gram of physical gold in a move intended to put the UK at the forefront of both blockchain innovation and the fledgling field of tokenised assets. The scheme went on to lose the support of its main partner - American financial market firm CME Group - and, according to reporting from The Fintech Times, it then disappeared from the agenda entirely.

The UK government taking the next step by minting its own NFT has been announced as a move intended to “show the forward-looking approach we are determined to take towards cryptoassets in the UK”. The full tweet (and the mixed responses it received) can be read here.

A prolific British crypto Twitter (CT) member @cobie asked why it would take four months to mint one NFT and offered his help, almost leading to the original post being ‘ratioed’ as he gained more likes.

Government-Backed NFT

The news of the Royal Mint NFT did not meet with a positive reception. The general public has a love/hate relationship with NFTs and many even questioned what exactly an NFT is.

The Guardian was critical of the timing, wondering why the Tory government would release an NFT in the wake of increasing poverty and austerity. NFTs are known to be among the most expensive digital assets with some selling for millions of pounds at Sotheby’s auctions or online on popular NFT marketplaces such as Opensea.

It’s yet known how valuable the Royal Mint NFT will be, what form it will take, whether NFT artists will be commissioned to produce it at the expense of the taxpayer and the level of detail of the artwork involved. No further details have been released.

A list of plans for the UK to regulate stablecoins and become a cryptoasset hub followed the announcement.

Source: Business 2 Community

(Links and quote via original reporting)