Throughout the Hong Kong Fintech Week, the financial institution HSBC introduced the gold token, the primary actual world asset token issued by a financial institution linked to bodily gold.
In actuality, the gold token of HSBC was launched in June 2024 and sadly for now it’s only for residents of Hong Kong.
1 token is equal to 0.001 ounce of gold. The tokens are sadly (however predictably) based mostly on a non-public distributed ledger, to keep away from fuel charges and on account of points associated to KYC, or moderately the truth that the financial institution needs to know who holds the tokens they usually are not looking for them to be freely exchanged between customers.
The distinction in investing within the gold token in comparison with investing in gold by different extra conventional channels, explains the spokesperson of HSBC, is that it’s attainable to purchase even only a small fraction of gold and the benefit can be that it’s saved digitally and is less complicated to purchase and promote.
To purchase the gold token, only a few clicks are wanted and go to the funding tab of the HSBC app.
Gold is clearly saved within the vaults of HSBC.
HSBC: Some numbers on the gold token on the Hong Kong Fintech Week
The presentation reveals that one purchaser out of three is a brand new investor; 95% purchase golden tokens from cellular, and nearly 90% are new to gold investments, so these are new individuals who beforehand wouldn’t have invested in gold or in any respect.
At present, plainly there are 20,000 holders of this gold token.
Concerning the charges, the spokesperson for HSBC explains that there are none for transaction, nor for custody payment.
Sooner or later, the financial institution’s undertaking is to offer the likelihood to transform the token into bodily gold, however at present, this isn’t but attainable.
