Shortly after announcing the project, the UK government decided to abandon its plans to create a non-fungible token for sale through the Royal Mint.

The Treasury's economic secretary, Andrew Griffith, confirmed the decision in response to a query from the Conservative MP Harriett Baldwin, saying: "In consultation with HM Treasury, the Royal Mint is not proceeding with the launch of a non-fungible token at this time but will keep this proposal under review."

Shadow City Minister Tulip Siddiq praised the choice. “I’m glad that the Royal Mint has finally made the Conservatives see sense, but we’ve been calling on the chancellor to drop this crypto gimmick for months,” she added.

“This out-of-touch government should be focused on the cost of living crisis, not wasting time and taxpayers’ money on an NFT vanity project and promoting dodgy stablecoins.” 

The Mint was asked by the Treasury to produce the token in April 2022. The statement made at the time, it shows the forward-looking attitude we are determined to take towards crypto assets in the UK.

After over a year of effort, hardly much is visible. The Mint did not provide a visual representation of the proposed non-fungible coin or any technical justification for how it would operate, what benefits it would provide users, or what blockchain technology it would be based on.

Just a few weeks before the bubble burst, the then-chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the creation of an NFT. A month later, the failure of the Terra/UST "algorithmic stablecoin" forced the Treasury to defend its plans in the face of a collapse in the value of all cryptocurrencies.

Since then, the sector has been engulfed in a crisis that is unfolding slowly, with FTX, Celsius, Voyager, and Genesis declaring bankruptcy, along with the banks Silvergate and Signature that specialize in cryptocurrencies, and Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange, being the focus of a US regulatory investigation.