A 1,100 year old UK-based mint has freezed its long-term ambitions to launch a cryptocurrency token that would represent physical gold holdings.
According to three unnamed sources familiar with the matter, Royal Mint took the decision after its partnership with the US-based exchange group CME came to an abrupt close. Confirming the incident, the Royal Mint spokesperson said they will not be launching the project any time soon as earlier planed citing market conditions but insisted the doors are still open for future reconsideration.
“Over the last few years, the royal mint has been working on the development of a digital gold product, RGM which was due to launch this Spring. Sadly due to market conditions this did not prove possible at this time, but we will revisit this if and when market conditions are right,” the spokesperson explained through email.
The Royal Mint Gold (RMG) token
Blockchain for tracking gold initiative was launched in 2016 with the aim of providing and tracking gold ownership as well as sales. speaking then during a London Blockchain Summit, Uk’s Royal Mint senior strategic manager Nicola Robinson revealed that the first successful transaction test for the token was conducted in august 2nd hyping it as a simple live, and working representation of the real gold.
“Its simple, it’s so simple, it’s just a digital representation of real gold. The most exciting thing about RMG is that its live, it’s out there, it’s working.” she said then.
The RMG token had formally been scheduled for launch before the close of 2017. However, a last minute decision by CME to pull out of the partnership paralyzed the entire project. CME is a Chicago based exchange which had opted to provide Royal Mint with a trading platform through the UK government. Its pulling out meant Royal Mint would not have a platform to issue there token on, at least for the time being
Governments’ wariness of cryptocurrencies
The imminent l failure of the millennial project to kick off signifies to a large extent the wary that many governments have on unregulated tokens (cryptocurrencies) which have steadily grown to the lime light in the recent past.
When CME left, Royal Mint soldered on and sought partnership with another crypto exchange in a bid to save the project. However, the British government through the ministry of finance deliberately denying them permit terming the union as “too big a gamble” given the government’s reputation which is at stake as the Royal Mint is fully owned by the government.
