Blockchain Will Disrupt Metals & Mining
Michelle Ash, Chief Innovation Officer at Barrick Gold recently even wondered aloud on social media as to whether Bitcoin would soon become a greater store of value than gold. While this is a fascinating trend, the intent of this article is not to focus existing cryptocurrencies, but to explore some of the other significant changes blockchain technology will likely bring to the Metals and Mining industry in the coming years.
Tokenization of physical assets
One of the most fundamentally transformative capabilities blockchain brings to the Metals and Mining industry is its ability to tokenize physical items and allow for the distribution, sale and trading of these new representative digital assets without the costs and overhead involved in equivalent physical world manipulations of the asset. A perfect exemplar of this capability is the RMG product developed by the UK’s Royal Mint. This year, the more than 1,000 year old Her Majesty’s Royal Mint will begin offering a blockchain based digital token called RMG (Royal Mint Gold). Each RMG is the tokenized equivalent of 1 gram of physical gold located in the Royal Mint vaults. In issuing these tokens, the British Royal Mint is looking to transform the global gold trading market.