Perth, March 19: The World Gold Council has unveiled plans to build shared market infrastructure for digital gold, as it looks to support broader adoption of gold-backed digital products in an increasingly tokenised financial system.
The initiative is outlined in a new white paper, Digital Gold: The Case for a Shared Infrastructure, co-authored with Boston Consulting Group, which explores a proposed platform known as “Gold as a Service”.
The model is intended to connect the physical custody of gold with the digital systems used to issue and manage gold-backed products, while standardising core processes such as reconciliation, compliance and redemption.
World Gold Council Chief Executive Officer David Tait said the push reflects the need for gold to remain relevant as financial services evolve.
“Financial services are undergoing a rapid and pervasive digital transformation and gold must also evolve to maintain its role in the global financial system. Gold as a Service is the latest step in the World Gold Council’s digital gold innovation programme, designed to strengthen trust, transparency and market efficiency. Shared infrastructure can help gold become more accessible, more easily traded and fully integrated into modern financial systems — ensuring it remains as relevant tomorrow as it has been for millennia.”
According to the paper, while gold trading, clearing and recordkeeping have already become increasingly digital, the market for digital gold products remains constrained by limited standardisation, operational complexity and reduced fungibility across platforms.
The proposed infrastructure aims to address these issues by creating a more scalable and interoperable system for digital gold issuance and use.
Boston Consulting Group Managing Director and Senior Partner Matthias Tauber said the focus is now on how gold can function within modern financial systems without losing its core characteristics.
“The question is no longer whether gold will be digital, it’s how it can participate in modern financial systems without compromising physical integrity. Together with the World Gold Council, we explored what it takes to build trusted rails for digital gold, at market scale.”
Under the proposal, Gold as a Service would support easier product issuance and management, embed continuous reconciliation and assurance, and improve interoperability with both traditional market infrastructure and emerging digital rails.
The aim is to make digital gold more fungible, accessible and capable of serving a wider range of financial uses beyond its traditional role as a store of value.
The World Gold Council said the platform could also open the door for gold to be used more readily as deployable capital, including for applications such as collateralised borrowing, while preserving the physical backing and trust that underpin the asset.
The organisation is now calling on innovators, market participants and stakeholders from inside and outside the gold industry to help shape the development of the shared infrastructure
Media & PR: editor@dailystraits.com. Copyright 2021–Present DailyStraits.com. All rights reserved.