UK Treasury and Royal Mint to work on NFT project in bid to boost crypto-investment

What 

The UK Treasury is partnering with the Royal Mint to create an NFT as part of a “crypto push” by the UK government

Why

John Glen, economic secretary to the Treasury, has said that the move reflects the UK’s commitment to “unleash the potential of crypto technologies”

What next

The Royal Mint NFT is expected to launch later this year and will be the first of its kind. Time will tell if digitalised collections become a popular medium among coin collectors

The story

Rishi Sunak, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, has asked the Royal Mint to begin working on an NFT, with a planned release date for later this year in the summer. The announcement came via a tweet from the Treasury’s Twitter.

John Glen made the announcement in London at the Innovate Finance conference earlier today, adding that this is “a genuine opportunity to build on our strengths in FinTech to seize the capitalist energy, which has already made UK financial services what it is” and that the project “will not happen overnight, but we think by making this country a hospitable place for crypto, we can attract investment, generate waves of new jobs and create a wave of groundbreaking new products and services”.

The Treasury says it hopes this will show the government’s commitment to attracting crypto companies to set up in the UK to bring “more investment and jobs”, and to foster “groundbreaking products and services”.

One user responded to the Treasury’s announcement tweet to ask if there was much crossover between coin collectors and people that buy NFTs, a question that time will reveal the answer to.

To learn more about NFTs visit our learning portal here.