Gold-backed Crypto? The Perth Mint is working on it...

Remember the Gold Standard?

Remember back in the day, long, long ago, when our everyday money was backed by gold? You could take you banknote to the Reserve Bank, and claim your money's worth in gold.

When that gold-standard was dropped, that's when the wheel nuts of the economy were loosened, and governments were free to print as much toilet paper ...err, money as they liked, under the fractional reserve system. Money lost its intrinsic value and become a promissory note, inflation took over, and the viscous circle of economic collapses and more money printing to "save the economy" was started. That has worked out well so far, hasn't it?

Cryptocurrency is similar to that it many ways (not in the money-printing way), being that there is no tangible asset backing most of them; they are built around services and projects. Sure, some are seen as "shares" or "vests" in the platform they run on, but you can't redeem most of them for a tangible asset. If you want to redeem its value, you generally have to cash it out into FIAT to buy something, or buy some consumable product or service with it directly. Wouldn't be great to have a blockchain backed by gold?

Enter the Perth mint.... recently one of my favourite places to visit.

The Perth Mint is working on a gold-backed cryptocurrency. The aim is to make a blockchain whose currency is backed by physical gold, making it more accessible to comsumers while also making investments more secure and transparent.

What it appears to be is that a token in their new crypto-gold blockchain will be backed by a certain amount of gold, and if my understandign is correct, the Perth Mint will be keeping gold in reserve for anyone to be able to redeem their crypto-gold tokens for however much gold that token is worth.

It will be interesting to see where this goes, and how it works out.There is no set date as to when the Mint will launch it's platform, but Perth Mint CEO Richard ayes says in the next 12 to 18 months we will see significant movement in that direction.

I think it's a great idea, and very inovative of the Perth Mint to be exploring blockchain to run its business on. I'd still like to be holding physical precious metals in my hands though, but this could be a good gateway into buying gold directly from the mint with crypto.

Of course, to my knowledge, @phelimint did it first with STEEM...

When the Mints start looking into using crypto, then you know this is the real deal!!

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