CoinShares, Blockchain and MKS Partner Creating Gold Token

CoinShares presented the DGLD product that is targeted at both retail and institutional clients, although most of the $20 million gold was digitized for high-net-worth clientele.

Digital asset manager CoinShares decided to start working with gold meaning putting this asset on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Together with Blockchain that is a wallet solutions provider and MKS (Switzerland) SA that acts as a precious metal trader this British company said on Tuesday they are making a gold-backed network that will be used for token trading and will represent digitized physical gold. The whole project took more than two years to be finalized.

As per CoinShares, the network launched yesterday with gold estimated for over $20 million that it is said to be held in a Swiss vault in order to back up its tokens. As it has become known each DGLD token is backed by 1/10th troy ounce.

According to the chairman of the company Danny Masters, “the product’s network security is based on the Bitcoin state, with DGLD operating as a sidechain of the bitcoin network.”

He added:

“DGLD combines the stability of the world’s most enduring asset, gold, with the security of the world’s most resilient network, Bitcoin.”

With establishing it on blockchain firm CommerceBlock’s Ocean sidechain platform, the DGLD network is significant because it combines financial security – unchangeability of the Bitcoin network’s per se, and Swiss vault storage.

Commenting on his position on this launch, the co-Founder and CEO of Blockchain, Peter Smith, noted:

“For centuries, gold has played a vital role in how governments and institutions’ manage global economic risks. But for retail investors, physical ownership of gold at any meaningful size has remained unattainable or their money is funneled into complex investment products. With DGLD, global purchasers of all sizes will be able to own and secure gold just like financial giants, without the high barrier to entry of legacy options.”

Marwan Shakarchi, Chairman of MKS on the other hand confirmed:

“DGLD is the natural progression of our work with gold, and gold formats at MKS. With DGLD, we’ve created a new format for gold ownership which makes vaulted physical gold, digitally useful, 24/7. This has the potential to profoundly change the way gold is used in every-day life.”

This, however, isn’t the only one crypto-gold connection it exists, while there are plenty of gold-based product launches in the cryptocurrency space.

Last week, cryptocurrency liquidity provider B2C2 launched a gold derivative product, which is priced and settled in Bitcoin (BTC). Also, last month,  Paxos, a stablecoin issuer, published a gold-pegged ERC-20 token dubbed PAXG. There is also Digix’s DGX token, which is represented as 1 gram of physical gold. This token is based on the Ethereum network as well.