Rishi Sunak’s ‘NFT for Britain’ plan scrapped after 11 months
The UK Treasury has abandoned its proposal for the Royal Mint to develop its own non-fungible token (NFT).
In April 2022, then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak ordered the Royal Mint to create its own “NFT for Britain”, which he claimed would become “a symbol of the forward-looking approach Britain is determined to take”.
But the arrangement has now been quietly scrapped.
On Monday, UK Finance Secretary Andrew Griffith said plans for a Royal Mint NFT were not moving forward “at this time”.
He added that his department would keep the proposal “under review”.
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Harriet Baldwin, head of the Treasury Select Committee, said: “We have yet to see much evidence that our voters should put their money into these speculative tokens unless they are prepared to lose all their money,” according to the BBC.
“So perhaps that is why the Royal Mint has taken this decision in partnership with the Treasury.”
A year ago, the Royal Mint said: “As part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s ambition to make the UK a global hub for technology and investment in cryptoassets, the Royal Mint has been asked to produce an NFT for the UK, we are delighted to once again lead the way for British currency.”
NFTs are unique digital assets that can be traded and purchased on online marketplaces.
In April 2022, when Sunak was chancellor, he planned to make the UK “a global technology hub for crypto assets”, and together with former economic secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer John Glen, he laid out a comprehensive roadmap for the UK’s crypto future.
This included the development of new legislation for a “financial market infrastructure sandbox” that could help crypto firms innovate.
As Chancellor, he also oversaw a Financial Conduct Authority-led ‘CryptoSprint’ to further encourage distributed ledger technology (DLT) innovation in the UK.
Blockchain technology is a key method for creating the secure distributed ledger technology that can be used in finance, information exchange and “smart” contracts.
Read more: Crypto: Will UK Banks Adopt CBDCs and Stablecoins?
Sunak also promoted Britcoin – a central bank digital currency (CBDC) project for the Bank of England (BoE).
Former head of fintech at the BoE Varun Paul told Yahoo Finance UK: “The political wind is certainly in favor of developing the UK as a crypto hub.
“I think we’re going to see a whole ecosystem and a coherent framework in the UK that includes CBDCs, stablecoins, cryptoassets, tokenized assets, decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs in a whole new financial architecture that will be an opportunity for the UK to take the lead globally.”
On Tuesday, bitcoin (BTC-USD) passed the $27,000 mark after the US Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) took legal action against the crypto exchange Binance.
Ether (ETH-USD), the second largest cryptocurrency, fell 2.1% to $1,726.
Watch: The Crypto Mile: Episode 4 – How NFT Art and Activism Responds to a World in Crisis
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