The Her Majesty’s Treasury Twitter account @hmtreasury tweeted this week that plans are in the works to create the first ever Royal Mint NFT.
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.
Aiyo i’ll do it for you right now it takes like 30 seconds, why u saying it will be like 4 months to do a single NFT??? does Royal Mint need to learn how to use a computer first or something
— Cobie (@cobie) April 4, 2022
Government Backed NFT
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.
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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.
It’s not clear yet however how valuable the Royal Mint NFT will be, what form it will take or the level of detail of the artwork involved – it’s not known if NFT artists will be commissioned to produce it at the expense of the taxpayer. As yet no details have been revealed.
The announcement was followed with a list of plans for the UK to regulate stablecoins and become a cryptoasset hub.
NFT Articles
Cryptoassets are a highly volatile unregulated investment product.
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