Rishi Sunak told to ‘come clean’ about cost of government-backed crypto

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The Trea­sury has been told to “come clean” on the cost of Rishi Sunak’s con­tro­ver­sial plan to cre­ate a non-fun­gi­ble token backed by the British state, which he is press­ing ahead with despite the col­lapse of the cryp­to mar­ket.

The Chan­cel­lor instruct­ed the Roy­al Mint to cre­ate an NFT by this sum­mer, in a step the Gov­ern­ment said was “an emblem of the for­ward-look­ing approach the UK is deter­mined to take”. It has so far refused to dis­close how much tax­pay­ers will pay for the plans.

NFTs are a form of dig­i­tal cer­tifi­cate that proves the holder’s own­er­ship of an asset. Their pop­u­lar­i­ty explod­ed last year as celebri­ties pro­mot­ed them to fans. How­ev­er, the val­ue of many NFTs has plum­met­ed in recent weeks as part of a glob­al rout of dig­i­tal assets includ­ing sev­er­al cryptocurrencies.

Gov­ern­ment offi­cials refused to dis­close cost­ing esti­mates for the plans in response to a free­dom of infor­ma­tion request by the Telegraph.

The Treasury’s Infor­ma­tion Rights Unit said it recog­nised an “inher­ent pub­lic inter­est in trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty of pub­lic author­i­ties,” but said divulging infor­ma­tion could com­pro­mise its con­tin­ued plan­ning efforts.

It added: “Plans for cre­at­ing non-fun­gi­ble tokens are still in devel­op­ment and it is there­fore impor­tant to ensure that options are not closed off and the qual­i­ty of deci­sions prej­u­diced by the pre­ma­ture release of information.”

Tulip Sid­diq, Labour’s shad­ow eco­nom­ic sec­re­tary, slammed the project, say­ing: “Instead of prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ing the cryp­to sec­tor to tack­le fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing, this incom­pe­tent Gov­ern­ment is wast­ing time and mon­ey on an NFT gimmick.

“The Con­ser­v­a­tives should come clean on how much tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey they have thrown down the drain – this lack of trans­paren­cy is shocking.”

It is not yet clear what asset the state-backed NFT will be linked to.

Research by The Block, a cryp­to news and research firm, found NFT sales have dropped by about 70pc since the start of the year, amid a broad­er sell-off than ana­lysts have labelled “cryp­to winter”.

A spokesman for the Roy­al Mint said it did not have an update to pro­vide on the project. A Trea­sury source said the costs of cre­at­ing the NFT would be met by the Roy­al Mint, which oper­ates as a gov­ern­ment-owned company. 

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