The British Royal Mint Will Launch Crypto Blockchain Gold Trading Platform

The Royal Mint, owned by Her Majesty’s Treasury, will soon begin a “digitized gold offering” made possible by blockchain technology, bitcoin’s underlying innovation.
Announced today, The Royal Mint revealed its partnership with CME Group, a derivatives marketplace to develop the digital gold product called Royal Mint Gold (RMG).
For a 100-year-old institution, the announcement represents a significant endorsement of the technology. “RMG will change the way traders and investors trade, execute and settle gold,” The Royal Mint stated. Initially, up to $ 1 billion worth of gold in RMG will be launched, the authority further revealed.
“The Royal Mint has a unique history and a trusted reputation earned over many centuries trading in gold but until now, there hasn’t been a way to digitally trade physical gold,” stated Vin Wijeratne, CFO at The Royal Mint, the sole licensed institution to issue coins in the UK which is now keeping up with the “game changer” that is blockchain.

The Royal Mint, the world’s leading exporter of mint coins is turning to blockchain.

The blockchain for the gold product will be developed, established and operated by Chicago-based CME Group, the world’s largest futures exchange, which has notably shown favor toward bitcoin and blockchain products this year. It recently launched a pair of indexes to track bitcoin’s price that would further the cryptocurrency’s visibility in the futures market. In May 2016, CME announced benchmark rates for bitcoin, a step ahead of the NYSE. Come October, regulated XRP Futures contracts of the Ripple blockchain were listed by London-based Crypto Facilities Ltd., a partner of the CME Group.
Indeed, The Royal Mint chose CME Group after its own interest in blockchain’s innovative potential, according to David Janczewski, director of new business at The Royal Mint.

He stated:
Distributed ledger technology is a game changer and supplying gold on a blockchain has been on our minds for some time, but only after partnering with CME Group did we feel we had the right fit and proposition.

The blockchain digital trading platform will be launched sometime mid-2017 and will operational 24 hours a day, every day, all year long. Furthermore, the RMG will enable significant benefits for investors such as choosing to convert the digital gold to physical gold by The Royal Mint, with no storage fees otherwise levied through the traditional model.
At launch, the market will see up to $ 1 billion gold bars, or around two tons at current prices that will be stored in the Mint’s vaults near Cardiff in Wales, the Telegraph revealed.