Humans have been killing each other over gold for centuries. Since the beginning of time, gold has been seen as a prized commodity regardless of the society in question. Different societies have fought for prized possessions made up of gold. Today Bitcoin is seen as a virtual gold due to the commodities holding similar features. People have been attracted to gold due to its color and brightness, durable to the point of virtual indestructibility, highly malleable, and usually found in nature in a comparatively pure form.
Until the 20th century, gold was used as the primary medium of exchange and the basis for most monetary systems. For example, in 1717, England adopted the gold standard and the United States followed with a gold-silver standard in 1792. Under these systems, the value of the local currency was confirmed to a set weight of gold and silver.
Currently, the process of buying, selling, transferring, confirming gold assets between entities is outdated and slow. The current market is restricting a lot of potential investors from entering the market.
PAX Gold (PAXG) is an asset-backed cryptocurrency where one token represents one fine troy ounce of a London Good Delivery gold bar. PAXG operates using the Ethereum blockchain. If you own PAXG it gives you ownership rights to that gold under the custody of Paxos Trust Company. Since PAXG represents physical gold, its value is tied directly to the real-time market price of physical gold. PAXG is available for purchase at several different vaults or exchanges like Metal Pay or Trust Wallet. PAXG tokens are created and destroyed by Paxos as needed. Paxos account holders can convert PAX Gold into U.S. Dollars or unallocated gold in a Loco London unallocated gold account, and vice versa. If customers hold more than 430 oz in PAX Gold, they can redeem their tokens for a physical gold bar. Paxos charges fees for creating and destroying tokens according to the fee schedule tiered by volume, posted on www.paxos.com. The purchase minimum on the Paxos platform is 0.01 PAXG (plus a 0.02 minimum PAXG creation fee). At any time, PAX Gold holders can go to the Paxos website to retrieve the serial number and physical characteristics of the vaulted gold they own. The only input required is an Ethereum address holding PAX Gold tokens.
Paxos is a regulated financial entity and its mission to create an ecosystem between physical and digital assets is exciting for the future of cryptocurrency. The total supply of PAXG is 334,010. Its current Market Cap is $604,760,055. The project’s whitepaper can be found here. With offices in New York, London and Singapore the project is growing. Do you think gold will still be a hot commodity in the next 30 years?
