UK Treasury Asks Government Coin Issuer To Mint NFT

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has asked government-owned coin issuer the Royal Mint to create the digital asset

article-image

Chancellor Rishi Sunak | Source: Pippa Fowles/"Rishi Sunak" (CC license)

share

key takeaways

  • The UK doubled down on its crypto plans Monday with the announcement that an NFT may be minted by this summer
  • The country’s finance ministry said it is prioritizing stablecoin regulation in a Monday report

In another effort to become a leader in digital asset technology, the United Kingdom’s Treasury has asked the Royal Mint, the agency responsible for creating British currency, to mint an NFT.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has asked the government-owned coin issuer to create an NFT (non-fungible token) by this summer, according to a tweet from the Treasury account Monday.

​​Economic Secretary to the Treasury John Glen addressed the news during his keynote speech at the Innovate Finance Global Summit on Monday.

“I am announcing today that the Chancellor has asked the Royal Mint to create a non-fungible token, an NFT…to be issued by the summer, an emblem of the forward-looking approach we are determined to take…and there will be more details available very soon,” Glen said.

The move comes as the UK’s finance ministry announced its plans to prioritize stablecoin regulation in a report released Monday. The ministry said it will be releasing further regulatory guidelines this year in an effort to protect consumers.

“We want this country to be a global hub — the very best place in the world to start and scale crypto companies,” Glen said. “If there is one message I want you to leave here today with, it is that the UK is open for business, open for crypto businesses.”

Sunak, who was unable to attend the summit, has not yet provided any additional information about the NFT.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.png

Research

RTK networks are critical to enabling a world of ubiquitous autonomous drones, vehicles, and industrial robots. We believe the GEOD token enables both a cost and product advantage for the GEODNET RTK network, which will allow it to out-compete multi-billion dollar incumbents Trimble and Hexagon.

article-image

Senator Cynthia Lummis hopes a US strategic bitcoin reserve can be teed up for “adoption in 2025”

article-image

As EIP-4844 “blobs” transform the economics of Ethereum layer-2s, a growing debate pits long-term scalability against immediate ETH value

article-image

Prosecutors argued that FTX co-founder Gary Wang cooperated in their case against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

article-image

The two largest crypto exchanges respectively run the second- and sixth-largest Solana validators

article-image

MicroStrategy’s bitcoin buying has exploded — it now holds 1.7% of the asset’s circulating supply

article-image

The MiCA era will reward the prepared and punish the rest