UK’s Royal Mint Launches Gold-Backed Cryptocurrency | Hacker News Reader

UK’s Royal Mint Launches Gold-Backed Cryptocurrency

cointelegraph.com

7 pointswalterbell11 comments

Let me guess, you can't redeem tokens for physical gold, and you can't use physical gold to purchase the tokens?

And if you could, what value would "blockchain" add to this?

On the FAQ:

Will an RMG® buyer be able to take physical possession of their gold?

Yes. One RMG represents ownership of 1g of 999.9 gold stored securely within The Royal Mint’s vault. RMG holders can request physical delivery of their gold . Fabrication fees apply to any gold bars if an investor requests delivery of gold in smaller quantities than London Good Delivery bars.

The cost of purchasing RMG does not include fabrication charges because it is more cost effective to own gold in the form of London Good Delivery bars (circa 400oz gold bars) than in smaller gold bars. If RMG holders choose to take physical delivery of smaller bars, they do need to pay the fabrication charge for those smaller bars prior to taking physical delivery.

Delivery fees do apply to all gold deliveries although The Royal Mint encourages RMG holders to arrange their own carriage/delivery.

I vouched this comment because it quotes relevant information from the RMG web site. My guess that the token is irredeemable is incorrect, though my general lack of enthusiasm for this offer remains.

What I would like to see is a token accepted by a wide network of gold dealers and depositories. It would be useful to be able to exchange the tokens for gold both ways and also be able to exchange the tokens for crypto and fiat currency at exchanges.

This provides no benefit whatsoever over the pooled gold options depositories using a centralized ledger that already exist, and is less attractive than an ETF for those who only way to trade the market.

One of the biggest issues declared for many cryptocurrencies seems to be that they are 'a store of value that has no backup use', which is also a major complaint about gold, being that so little is used for electronics et al.

Naive question: Would copper have been a suitable contender?

So pretty much the exact antithesis of a real cryptocurrency, then. A form of e-currency (is that too Olde Schoole?), issued by fiat is not what cryptocurrencies are about -- the very point of them is to take the issuance and control out of the hands of sovereigns.

> the very point of them is to take the issuance and control out of the hands of sovereigns

I think a lot of cryptocurrency enthusiasts are going to be solely disappointed when history teaches them the lesson that the common man cannot take the keys to the kingdom.

It's a nice utopian idea to take take the issuance and control out of the hands of sovereigns. However I feel that history has taught us that this just doesn't happen. Eventually the cryptocurrency "free market" will get regulated and the leash will tighten, and central reserves will begin to issue token-based currency backed by a traditional resource.

The technology will almost certainly carry over, but the open source element of it likely won't.

Except that historically money was issued by all and sundry. The notion that ONLY sovereigns may/can issue money is historically quite a recent one (and quite wrong in any case -- witness the innumerable local-exchange systems all over the world.)

A bit like what happened to the web?

Except it's not fiat. It's on the gold standard, and you can exchange for gold.

It being stored in the Mint's vault might even be a feature in this case.

I’d rather have a handful of sovereigns.

(It's gold, not fiat)

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