Gold token wants to track metal price.
The japanese conglomerate Mitsui plans to issue a crypto asset backed by physical gold, which it will sell to retail consumers who will be able to use it even to pay cell phone bills. According the Nikkei news site, the launch of ZipangCoin (ZPG) will be later this month.
Mitsui has created an exchange with partners, where the sale will take place first. Afterwards, the sale will be on other exchanges. Mitsui operates in businesses such as finance, brewing, shipping and oil. You will buy gold on the London Metal Exchange and then tokenize it. The token value is one gram and guaranteed by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking.
This is at least the second initiative by the Japanese group in crypto assets. Last November, its asset management-focused subsidiary, MBAM, launched a token backed by a warehouse, i.e. real estate.
The creation of gold crypto has already happened in other markets, such as the InfiniGold project with the Australian government’s Perth Mint. In Brazil, for example, PAX Gold is on sale in the Bitcoin Market. In this case, it is a gold-backed cryptocurrency.
There is always a comparison between bitcoin and gold as a store of value and there are those who say that the metal will lose ground to cryptocurrency. Which is important, because gold is usually a store of value against inflation and considered a safe haven.