The three-mile long British island of Alderney wants to mint physical Bitcoins.
It wants to launch itself as the first international centre for Bitcoin transactions by setting up a cluster of services that are compliant with anti-money laundering rules, including exchanges, payment services and a Bitcoin storage vault.
It’s not as crazy as it sounds, it would actually be a synthetic Bitcoin, represented by commemerative coins and held in a digital vault.
The company would put the Bitcoins in an escrow account at an agreed price.
Meanwhile, the Royal Mint would take customers’ orders for its minted Bitcoins and receive money from those coin sales.
The virtual Bitcoins backing the physical coins would be held in digital storage facilities by Alderney.