It’s what you get when you combine bitcoin, one of the world’s newest would-be currencies, and gold, one of the oldest. Add mistrust of centralized authority, a dash of rebelliousness and a dollop of profit motive and you might have the Independence Coin, the first gold-backed crypto-money, unveiled this month at FreedomFest, a libertarian convention in — where else? — Las Vegas.
We don’t need to fight. We can coalesce
“A staunch person who believes in the gold standard says bitcoin is valueless and ultimately a Ponzi scheme, and people who didn’t dig gold but really got bitcoin would say that this is ridiculous, it’s just a dumb metal,” Anthem Hayek Blanchard, chief executive officer of Anthem Vault Inc., the company behind the Independence Coin, said in an interview. “We don’t need to fight. We can coalesce.”
Despite the skepticism, bitcoin and gold make a natural match, like kittens and milk. Gold, a store of value since ancient times, has long been popular with investors seeking a haven and doomsayers rejecting fiat currencies churned out on central bank printing presses. Bitcoin, cooked up by programmers six years ago, has been embraced by hipster anarchists and others eager to trade online while avoiding the constraints of conventional money. There are signs that the two sides are finally meeting cute.
Last month, DNA Precious Metals Inc., which digs for gold and silver residue in Quebec, Canada, formed a subsidiary called DNA Crypto Corp. to mine online. The Montreal-based company, a penny stock that trades over-the-counter, saw its market shifting to a new unit of exchange for the digital age and wanted to take part, Tony Giuliano, the chief financial officer, said in an interview.
Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, the Harvard University-educated twins famous for their dispute with Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg, are planning to introduce the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, an exchange-traded fund reminiscent of the SPDR Gold Shares fund. Their application, which would be the first of its kind, is pending with the Securities and Exchange Commission. An e-mail to New York-based Winklevoss Capital Management LLC wasn’t answered.
There’s no doubt any marriage, or at least an online date, would be between unequals. Bitcoin, which has endured wild price swings since its introduction, now has about US$8 billion in circulation, according to CoinDesk, a news and pricing website. Gold, with centuries of a head start, boasts an US$18 trillion-a- year global market, according to CPM Group, a New York-based research company.
Bitcoin originated in a 2008 paper by a programmer or group of programmers under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It uses a public ledger and cryptography to log transactions and secure ownership. Prices plummeted earlier this year from a high of US$1,147 in 2013 after the collapse of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange, once the world’s largest, and China and Russia moved to block money laundering.
One bitcoin currently sells for about US$600, according to Bloomberg’s Virtual Currency Monitor.
Gold prices are less volatile. They ranged from US$1,182.57 to US$1,433.73 an ounce in the past year. The metal has climbed 7.8% to US$1,294.75 in 2014 after the first annual decline in 13 years.
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