Lohko, the digital asset wallet provider, has partnered with London-based tech firm Mattereum to launch nonfungible tokens (NFTs) that are backed by gold and have carbon offsets attached.
It has been reported that the tokens represent ownership over physical gold bars that are stored in a vault in Singapore managed by partner Bullionstar. Each NFT represents an underlying bar of gold, with both the token and the physical bar of gold sharing a unique serial number. The tokens are also sold with a warranty ensuring NFT’s owner “has full legal rights to redeem the physical gold bar.”
However, the NFTs have been listed on popular Ethereum-based NFT marketplace OpenSea, with the tokens representing either one ounce of gold, 10 grams of gold, or 100 grams of gold.
NFTs pegged to gold? Wallet provider Lohko and London-based tech firm Mattereum have teamed up to mint nonfungible tokens backed by gold with carbon offsets attached. https://t.co/C93ohnhmK4 (Reporting via @samuel_haig) — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) May 26, 2021
The report said that one of the 100 gram NFTs also features 3D digital art depicting an animated bull on a gold bar. A version of this token appears to have been first listed on OpenSea for 7 Ether three months ago.
Antti Saarnio, the CEO of Lohko, said:
“Gold’s main limitation as an investment category has been that its ownership is difficult to transfer […] NFT gold owners are able to sell their gold anywhere and to anyone in any blockchain marketplace. This is a huge benefit for gold investors providing them better liquidity and higher sales margin.”
Thus, Lohko is not the first to tokenize gold, with the Perth Mint Gold Token claiming it was the first token backed by “government-guaranteed gold” to launch on a public blockchain in October 2019, while asset manager Coinshares and wallet provider Blockchain teamed up to launch a Swiss gold-backed token on a private Bitcoin sidechain that same month.
Source: Cointelegraph