The World Gold Council is seeking to launch a digital form of gold, a move that could revolutionise London’s $900bn physical market for the precious metal by creating a new way to trade, settle and collateralise bullion.
This new format would create the ability to “pass gold digitally around the gold ecosystem, as collateral, for the first time”, said David Tait, chief executive of the World Gold Council, an industry body representing gold miners, in an interview with the Financial Times.
While many investors value gold precisely because of its physical nature and its lack of counterparty risk, seeing it as a haven asset, Tait argues that bullion must be digitised to broaden its market reach.