Gold industry wants digital transaction register similar to Bitcoin

Zurich The industry associations World Gold Council (WGC) and London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) are working on extensive digitization of the global gold trade. To this end, the associations have started a pilot project in cooperation with gold mines, refineries and traders in which the origin of gold bars and their complete transaction history are digitally recorded, as the WGC and LBMA announced in a joint statement on Monday.

The publicly visible transaction history of the gold market is said to be based on the distributed ledger technology that is also behind the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. To this end, WGC and LBMA are working together with the blockchain companies aXedras and Peer Ledger. These are initially intended to demonstrate on a test basis how distributed ledger technology can create an immutable record of a gold bar’s place of origin and chain of custody.