While millions are choosing between eating or heating as the cost of living scandal bites, Rishi Sunak is instructing the Royal Mint to issue an official non-fungible token (NFT), as “an emblem of the forward looking approach” the UK government is taking on cryptocurrency.
NFTs are marketed as a means of using blockchain technology – a sort of public ledger – to enforce property rights over “one-of-a-kind” digital “assets”, such as cartoon ape avatars. The government has released few details of its own planned NFT, but in principle we can expect it to mean the Royal Mint selling ownership of a digital file such as an image, in a similar manner to which it sells other collectables such as coins. We don’t know if the Royal Mint will produce more than one, or how much they will sell for. But those details are less important than what the gesture represents.
Over the past year, speculative mania has emerged around NFT art after someone paid $69m for a digital collage. The whole affair exhibited the telltale signs of market manipulation.
