Six months ago, we wrote that government-owned Perth Mint was to work with ASX-listed Security Matters on a gold supply chain solution that includes blockchain and chemical markers. Last week the trueGold platform made a step forward by creating a joint venture between Security Matters and a Perth Mint subsidiary. The company has A$1 million in initial funding from a third party, with additional investment expected.
The aim is to track gold from mines to refiners, vault operators, depositories, mints, wholesalers, and retailers to ensure it’s ESG compliant and address counterfeiting and corporate transparency.
It’s expected that trueGold will “enhance, complement and promote” current ESG frameworks from the World Gold Council and the London Bullion Market Association.
Perth Mint is one of the world’s largest precious metals refiners and Security Matters has patented technology for marking, classification and identification, including for cannabis plants and seeds.
It wasn’t the only piece Perth Mint news last week. A new gold backed stablecoin “Universal Gold” (UPXAU) was launched by San Francisco firm Uphold, backed by gold in Perth Mint vaults.
Previously, the Perth Mint worked with InfiniGold to create GoldPass certificates that are backed 1:1 by Perth Mint gold. However, these GoldPass certificates are not blockchain based. Subsequently, InfiniGold tokenized the Perth Mint GoldPass certifications on the Ethereum blockchain as PMGT.
So the new Uphold tokens are very similar but Uphold claims to have 1.7 million customers on its “digital money” platform. Uphold is sort of a cryptocurrency exchange but also tokenizes existing stocks. The benefits claimed for the tokenized gold include zero storage fees, it’s redeemable in physical gold, instant settlement and the possibility of investing as little as $1.
There are numerous other existing gold tokens, including Digx Gold, PAX Gold and the Tether Gold (although with Tether the asset backing is often questioned).
Earlier this year, Turkey’s Borsa Instanbul launched a digital gold trading platform that uses blockchain, BiGA.
