Gold Goes Digital for a More Ethical Sourcing

As blockchain technology continues to gain momentum, gold joins into its digital realm. California-based Emergent Technology Holdings, a tech company specializing in providing efficient and reliable payment solutions and finance infrastructure, has plans of digitally encoding the stages of the gold supply chain through the use of blockchain technology. They plan on introducing the G-Coin and the Responsible Gold Supply Chain in the first half of 2018.

Emergent Technology is working with Yamana Gold, a Canadian-based gold producer with production and land exploration properties not only in Canada, but also in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, in creating what they call ‘g-coins’ that have a physical equivalent in gold. One coin is worth one gram of gold, pegged at the spot price of the precious mineral. This g-coin is a blockchain-asset and can be used in investments and payments as a digital certificate.

While this is not the first time for gold companies to go digital, with New York’s TradeWind’s partnership with CME Group Inc. and the UK Royal Mint announcing the same move earlier in the year, Emergent stands out for not only attempting to track gold on a blockchain, but is focusing more on the supply chain, for putting a value on responsibly sourced gold. With blockchain technology, Emergent can track the gold from its source and make sure that all steps in the supply chain are recorded and publicly visible. The tracking is done by putting a cryptographic seal on the gold. These tamper-proof seals record all transfers of custody and other data. This technology also allows the process of having the gold from the mines to the vaults automated.

Even the London Bullion Market Association, overseers of the largest global center for over-the-counter gold and silver transactions, are planning on using blockchain for better tracing and for the prevention of money laundering, and for a more responsibly sourced supply of the mineral. The value of using blockchain technology cannot be ignored, and while bitcoin is still as volatile and as risky as it had started, its backbone, the blockchain, has proven its mantle beyond cryptocurrency. It ensures a traceable and cost-effective supply chain management with a transparency that makes processes simpler. Plus, it is valuable across all industries for a faster, simpler, and more reliable way of recording anything and everything under the sun.

Digitizing gold has been dubbed as “the most important thing to happen to the gold market in the last several decades”. This is a big leap for the gold industry, which have often been criticized as a hard transaction, inefficient and lazy. With the digital boost of the blockchain, however, it seems gold is ready for the modern market. While some had thought that bitcoin to be the digital gold, it would appear that having gold as digital cash is a more stable option. With bitcoin value dropping 43% and gold steadily gaining 3.6%, plus with a market much bigger than that of the cryptocurrency market, there is not much to argue about it.