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From ancient Egypt to crypto exchanges:
the Evolution of Aurum_______________________________________________________________
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Gold is As Old As the Ages_______________________________________________________________
People have always been influenced by gold. It has inspired wars, provided wealth, shaped the course of human history. The rich used it for jewelry, dishware, and ornamentals. Way back in ancient times, these rich people used it to replace missing teeth.
The earliest traces of gold were tracked to 40,000 BC in ancient caves, although it was the ancient Egyptians who were the first to promote gold — using it to develop everything from jewelry to the capstones of the Great Pyramids to King Tut’s funeral mask. They also charted maps to mines. in 564 BC, *Lydia, followed by ancient Greece and Rome launched gold and its alloys as currency. The Romans introduced hydraulic mining. In the 14th century, King Ferdinand of Spain robbed the Inca and Aztec of more than 150,000 kilograms of gold for his own reserves.
Two centuries later, the British launched the first bank. People deposited their money with goldsmiths for safety. The goldsmiths issued a note promising to pay the bearer a certain sum on demand. In time, people exchanged these notes instead of coins, because it was easier and safer. Goldsmiths lent the money deposited with them in return for a high rate of interest.
Britain, too, was the first country to create a gold standard, namely a fixed currency value for gold based on its weight. In due time, other countries followed, with the United States pegging its dollar to gold in 1792. Gold and silver became America’s legal currency, with gold growing 15 times more popular than silver, until the Civil War.
Gold rushes further popularized gold. In 1695 and 1719, gold was discovered in Brazil. In the 1900s, gold was found in different parts of America, including San Francisco, Colorado, and South Dakota. The fever spread to Australia, North Africa and Canada. In each case, new habitations sprung up where none (or few) existed; California’s Gold Rush led to it becoming a state two years later.
Unfortunately, the two World Wars hampered gold production, shut mines and impoverished countries. Since America emerged, in 1944, as the richest country, the allied leaders established the U.S. dollar as the global currency, and created the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in what became known as the Bretton Woods System. The USD dollar was pegged at $35 per ounce of gold. In 1973, an impoverished United States under President Nixon unhooked the value of dollar from gold. Without price controls, the cost of gold shot up in the free market.
Today, gold remains an important investment, with gold prices hovering around $1,200 and $1,400 an ounce since 2011. Gold is used in coins, jewelry, medals, and other tokens. It is also used in electronic devices including computers, cell phones, and televisions, as well as in aerospace mechanical and medicine.
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Here’s Why People Love Gold…_______________________________________________________________
Even though the gold standard has disappeared, the value of gold grows with the years. This is for several reasons. First, most investors recognize that fiat (or the plain old U.S. dollar) has long lost its value and, being backed by nothing, is merely a flip of paper. Gold has inconceivably more value. Second, gold hedges inflation, since gold prices rise when the cost of living decreases. For the same reason, gold protects you against deflation, or starvation, since while the rest of the country suffers from minimal wages, the price of gold soars. Other currencies may lose their value, but gold survives and prospers. Then there’s the fact that certain gold-consuming countries, where gold is a part of their cultures, are emerging market economies. The Indian wedding season in October, for instance, tends to see the highest global demand for gold, while in China, where its locals traditionally hoard gold bars and coins, demand for gold is steady. Gold is great for portfolio diversification, since the mineral either thrives or soars while another stock or financial instrument does the reverse. So, for instance, the 1970s was great for gold but terrible for stocks, while the 1980s and 1990s were great for stocks, but awful for gold. Successful investors diversify their portfolios, preferably include one or more investments with reciprocal negative correlations, to hedge for all conditions. Finally, gold production has declined since 2000s. In fact, the annual gold-mining output fell from 2,573 metric tons in 2000 to 2,444 metric tons in 2007. It takes five to ten years to dig a mine. When there’s less gold, the price for your piece of gold escalates. For each of these reasons, gold investment is one heck of a deal.
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Exchange Traded Funds_______________________________________________________________
An ETF, or an exchange-traded fund, is a pool of securities that trades on a stock exchange. Unlike mutual funds, that are actively managed, ETFs are passively managed, meaning they track a stock or bond index, and that helps to keep their costs low.
These types of investments have been around since 1993, but they started being used significantly about a decade later, when investors discovered that ETFs offer low-cost diversification, trading and arbitrage options, although they have their disadvantages, too. If you are considering an ETF for your portfolio, here are the main pros and cons:
Advantages:
• ETF prices are updated throughout the day, while mutual funds are priced once a day after the markets close. This means, ETFs can be bought and sold throughout the day and can be bought on margin, sold short, or traded using stop orders and limit orders.
• Accountability. Most mutual funds publish details of their stocks or companies (known as “constituents”) on an infrequent basis and are not known for their transparency. ETFs, on the other hand, publish the list of assets in the fund on a daily basis.
• An ETF’s annual expenses and trading costs are usually lower than non-index mutual funds.
• ETFs are a “tax friendly” investment, in that capital gains taxes are generally lower for ETFs than for traditional mutual funds
• ETFs usually allow you to diversify your portfolio into other sectors of the market, like gold.
Disadvantages:
• ETFs may not be cost effective if you are buying them through small, regular contributions because of the commissions associated with purchasing ETFs. ETFs are typically sold through a brokerage, and in most cases investors must pay commissions to buy shares. Many mutual funds are commission-free.
• From a timing perspective, selling an ETF when you want to or need to may be difficult if the ETF is an unpopular security which makes it risky, or if the market is experiencing high volatility.
• Some ETFs are more expensive and riskier than mutual funds. A recent Morningstar study comparing the average expense ratios of index-based ETFs and comparable mutual funds found that ETFs were only cheaper than their mutual fund counterparts in a few categories.
While many of the first ETFs simply tracked the major indexes, investors can now choose from a mind-boggling array of products. (To date, there are more than 1,600 U.S.-listed ETFs, according to MorningStar). Advisors recommend investors to look under the hood, as they should do with any type of investment product.
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Bullion on the Blockchain?_______________________________________________________________
Why not? The possibilities are endless. The blockchain gives gold investors fungibility, verified reserves, speed and unlimited storage, making gold investments and trading more transparent. The whole process becomes more efficient, faster, and far cheaper to store and to trade.
There are various blockchain technologies that, backed by real gold, have recently sprung up digitizing gold.
Of these, Digix may be the best-known. According to its website description:
“Digix tokenizes gold on Ethereum. We leverage the Distributed Ledger for its immutability, transparency and auditability, by applying it to precious physical assets. Digix has created a range of technologies including The Proof of Asset Protocol (POA) and Digix Gold Tokens (DGX) on Ethereum.”
Digix uses Ethereum and IPFS to record the amount of its gold reserves and ownership on its distributed ledger. It has its own auditors and helps gold investors purchase certified bullion from London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) refineries.
The thing is that Digix has two tokens: Digix Gold and Digix DAO. Digix DAO is popular largely because of intensive marketing, while Digix Gold is barely used.
Second, our own company, GoldMint LLC. realizes that to help gold investors it needs to do far more. For that reason, GoldMint goes beyond tokenizing gold and also helps you with P2P lending and different investment scenarios. GoldMint, subsequently, has a better chance of attracting laypeople to its platform than do competitors, like Digix.
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The advantages of GOLD tokens_______________________________________________________________
In early 2017, GoldMint PTE LTD developed the idea of a blockchain-based gold platform, with a token called GOLD. GOLD is an Exchange Traded Commodity (“ETC”) that can be created and redeemed on demand (by market makers). It trades on the ASX just like an equity, is settled and held in ordinary brokerage accounts, and its pricing and tracking operates similarly to an ETF. No new securities can be issued until the bullion is delivered to the custodian’s vault. Its value is fixed to the current price of gold set on the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).
Here are GoldMint’s other advantages:
* Transparency — All transactions and audit figures are stored on the blockchain.
* Speed — GoldMint has its own blockchain, called Graphene, so GOLD transactions are faster than transactions done on Bitcoin or Ethereum. Of course, since GOLD is a cryptocurrency, it is far faster than any inter-bank transfer.
* Security — The blockchain protocol is secure.
* Universality — Since gold has global value, people all over the world will come to appreciate GOLD.
* Stability — GOLD is a stable token. Its worth correlates with the price of one ounce of gold at the LBMA exchange.
* Credibility — Gold is a well-known asset accepted for payment in most countries.
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Conclusion_______________________________________________________________
GoldMint’s GOLD cryptoasset is designed to offer investors a simple, cost-efficient and secure way to store, trade and invest gold by providing a return equivalent to the movements in the gold spot price, with competitive GoldMint commission for borrowers, to boot.
In short, GoldMint’s blockchain gives you a more liquid and verifiable market for physical gold, makes gold more useful as collateral, and even enhances it as a means of exchange. The more useful the commodity, the greater its value.
Gold has influenced mankind from time immemorial. Digitizing it into GOLD gives you endless possibilities.
