Her Majesty’s Treasury is working on a new kind of mint: NFTs

Image: Her Majesty’s Treasury

The United Kingdom's treasury minister has ordered the Royal Mint to create an NFT as an emblem of the forward-looking approach. The project was announced in a speech by John Glen, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who said at a summit that more details on the mint would be coming very soon.

This particular announcement is coming from one of the highest levels of the British government, so it feels a bit different. The entity in charge of printing the country's money is supposed to carry it out.

That isn't to say that UK citizens shouldn't expect the government to replace the pound with HerMajesty. The lack of details makes it easy to see that the treasury is serious about making the UK a hub of financial innovation.

It seems like the UK government is taking it seriously. Glen said that the treasury is asking a legal task force to consider the legal status of the organizations. The talk is 21 minutes long and you can watch it in full below.

The UK's treasury is working on regulating some stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies whose value is, in theory, largely tied to the price of fiat currencies.

It is hard to know what to expect from the treasury's project. Will it be a collectible that people will want to keep in their wallet? Is it just a single NFT locked up in a hardware wallet in Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London?

The important part is probably not that. While NFTs are buzzy, their future will likely be shaped by how countries with a big stake in global finance choose to regulate them rather than any particular project.