The world’s first digital token backed by government guaranteed gold has commenced trading.
The Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) is now live on the KuCoin exchange and backed by the world’s largest refiner of newly mined gold.
The token has been issued by InfiniGold, a commodities digitisation company, which developed the Perth Mint’s GoldPass trading app.
InfiniGold says the token is underpinned 1:1 by Perth Mint digital GoldPass certificates, which represent physical gold held in storage at the mint.
The development flies against many digital currency proponents, including the Facebook famed Winklevoss twins, who have previously argued bitcoin was to make gold redundant as the global store-of-value.
And comes amid cryptocurrencies’ march towards the financial mainstream, following recent cryptocurrency guidelines, set by money-laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The Perth Mint, a member of the London Bullion Market Association, currently safeguards wealth valued at more than AU $4.5 billion within its vaults for clients – ranging from central banks and sovereign wealth funds to individuals.
InfiniGold’s CEO Andreas Ruf says the Perth Mint Gold Token brings an unprecedented depth of liquidity to the market.
“We haven’t simply purchased a couple of gold bars, put them in a vault and then tokenised them” he says.
“We can tap into billions of dollars worth of gold stored at The Perth Mint.”
InfiniGold says PMGT offers a differentiated risk-off token in the digital asset ecosystem when compared with most commonly used risk-off tokens, USD-backed stablecoins.
Johnny Lyu, co-founder of KuCoin, says the issuing is another step forward in the mission to spark mainstream adoption of crypto-assets.
“We’re really excited to be listing the world’s first token, which is backed by a government guarantee on the underlying asset.”