Britain is not going to get its own digital token as the Treasury said plans for the Royal Mint to create an NFT have been scrapped.
Economic Secretary Andrew Griffith announced the shelving in a written reply to a question from Tory MP Harriett Baldwin, something the Treasury later confirmed.
A relatively new concept, NFTs confer ownership of a collectible digital asset (such as images) but have been dogged by frauds, fees, rows over ownership and environmental criticism.
Ms Baldwin, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, told the BBC: "We have not yet seen a lot of evidence that our constituents should be putting their money in these speculative tokens unless they are prepared to lose all their money.
"So perhaps that is why the Royal Mint has made this decision in conjunction with the Treasury."
Royal Mint was appointed by PM Rishi Sunak last year to come up with something that was an “NFT for Britain” that could be traded online.
Having enjoyed a burst of interest in 2021, prices of NFTs slumped from May of last year when digital currencies collapsed leading to the failure of crypto exchange FTX, which had been a prominent platform for their trading.
Bored Ape Yacht Club is perhaps the best-known NFT minter, with at times before the recent slump its artworks selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.