The UK government-owned Royal Mint has frozen plans for digital gold. In November 2016 the Royal Mint in conjunction with the CME announced the intention to launch a digitized gold offering called Royal Mint Gold (RMG). In late 2017, the CME pulled out when the project was already at an advanced stage. The Royal Mint looked for alternatives, but according to Reuters, the UK government balked at the idea of trading on a cryptocurrency exchange.
The CME venture had planned for up to $1 billion worth of gold initially which would have been kept in Royal Mint vault storage. Alphapoint developed the RMG digital asset trading platform, and BitGo developed a wallet.
But the CME’s priorities changed. In December 2017 it launched Bitcoin futures to much fanfare. However, the regulated instruments are not particularly popular, in part because of the high margin requirements as a result of Bitcoin’s volatility.
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