- The UK Chancellor’s plan to have the Royal Mint to create an NFT has gone down as well as could be expected
- The British public were typically caustic in their opinion of Rishi Suank’s plan
- The environment, money laundering, and Sunak himself came up in the range of criticisms
It’s a fair bet that no one, from the Royal Mint’s marketing department to UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak himself, has any idea what an NFT actually is, and yet yesterday saw a cringe-inducing combination of the two – a Royal Mint NFT, coming this summer to a blockchain near you, to commemorate the UK’s push into the crypto sector. Or something like that. Whatever the reason for its diabolical conception, the idea has gone down as well as a fart in a crowded lift, with Sunak and NFTs universally panned by the British Twitter-going public and leaving everyone asking one question – why?
Chancellor @RishiSunak has asked @RoyalMintUK to create an NFT to be issued by the summer.
This decision shows the the forward-looking approach we are determined to take towards cryptoassets in the UK. pic.twitter.com/cd0tiailBK
— HM Treasury (@hmtreasury) April 4, 2022
British NFT Takes Hotter Than a Vindaloo
Sunak announced yesterday that the Royal Mint, which has been successfully minting British currency for over 1,000 years without his interference, would be creating its first NFT as part of a push to show just how serious the UK is about crypto adoption. However, the only success Sunak achieved with the announcement was the advent of the pro crypto and anti crypto communities coming together to savage the idea.
The first target was Sunak himself and the government he represents, whose suitability for the role of NFT Minter-in-Chief was immediately questioned:
Considering he doesn’t know how to work a cashcard, im pretty confident he also doesn’t know what an NFT is.
— Ian Foster (@fozzyami) April 4, 2022
You’ve managed here to efficiently combine into one tweet the three greatest threats to the standard of living for a generation – the energy crisis, the economic crisis and the perma-crisis which is this shambolic government of halfwits.
Well done. Really. Well done. 👏
— Stuart Frisby (@stuartfrisby) April 4, 2022
Next came the NFT itself, which it seems will not be high on the list for JPEG lovers:
Can’t see this complementing my NFT collection, think I’ll give it a miss
— Jay ⭕️ (@Jormisher) April 4, 2022
Who the hell do you think is going to buy an ‘Royal Mint NFT’?
The people who buy commemorative coins aren’t the same people who have crypto wallets, and the people who actually do have crypto wallets stopped buying NFTs in February.— Euan Yours (@EuanYours) April 4, 2022
There were, naturally, the anticipated hot takes about the environmental cost, even though the blockchain on which the NFTs will be minted has not yet been revealed. To be fair though, some were pretty funny:
Very proud to announce that I was commissioned to come up with the first ever Rishi Sunak/Royal Mint environmental disaster digital wallet tracking scam, I mean NFT. Bidding in untraceable Rishidollars commences at 42Billion pic.twitter.com/e1buprr0k7
— HappyToast ★ (@IamHappyToast) April 4, 2022
Wasting a giant amount of energy to make something that’s basically just a glorified share.
Fantastic.
And at a time when the rest of us can barely afford to heat our homes.
— Komrade Kameron (@KomradeKlassics) April 4, 2022
We also had the relatively new argument, which has been completely discredited, that Russian oligarchs are using crypto to launder their wealth, with some even claiming that the blockchain is no longer traceable:
oh yes, one NFT will make us a “global cryptoasset hub”..
well, I’m guessing it will make donations harder to track 💰💰💰💰💰💰— kate m k (@katemk10) April 4, 2022
Ah, fair enough.
— Aiden Stanley (@FromAiden) April 4, 2022
The Royal Mint itself seems to have escaped the mauling, which is fair because it is the unwitting victim in this whole sorry mess…and this is even before we’ve seen the NFT itself.
The mind boggles.
