In early 2022 Mitsui & Co Digital Commodities launched a gold token Zipang Coin. While Mitsui is the issuer with the gold held in a London vault, the technical and trading side is dealt with by Digital Asset Markets (DAMS) whose investors include Mitsui & Co and JPX, the owner of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Now DAMS plans to expand the promotion of Zipang Coin to Korea through a deal with Creder.
Creder is a joint venture between Korean blockchain technology firm BMPG and ITcen. ITcen is the leader of the BDX consortium that will run the Busan Digital Asset Exchange, which launches later this year. Other consortium members include Hana Bank and Hana Securities, and commodities are one of the major targets for the exchange.
However, ITcen also operates the Korean Gold Exchange with its SENGOLD product. This is a consumer targeted commodity trading business that doesn’t use blockchain. However, it has now expanded into digital assets, although the current process seems complicated. For legal reasons it uses an NFT as an intermediate asset between its conventional e-gold and the Gold-Pegged Coin (GPC) blockchain tokens.
Hence, perhaps Creder sees the ZipangCoin solution as a more elegant alternative.
ZipangCoin certainly has some interesting features, including something that resembles bankruptcy remoteness. If Mitsui & Co Digital Commodities (MCDC) wants to shutter the coin, it has to buy the consumer coins via DAMS at a price close to gold’s market value. If MCDC went bankrupt, DAMS has an insurance guarantee that covers the market value of the issued coins.
Meanwhile, earlier this year Creder also entered into an agreement with Malaysian digital asset exchange Green-X.
