Gold has traditionally been a store of value, but in an era of high-speed decentralized finance, dealing with physical billion can be illiquid and even cumbersome and in a newly released white paper co-authored with Boston Consulting Group, the World Gold Council is announcing gold as a service and it is a first of its kind shared infrastructure designed to bridge the gap between physical custody as well as digital issue and will joining me to tell us more is Mike Oswin, the Global Head of Market Structure and Innovation at the World Gold Council.
Good morning, Mike.
Good afternoon to you in London.
So thank you so much for joining us.
So first and foremost, spot gold is pulling back but is holding above that 4500 level this morning and we have been seeing various attempts to digitize gold or that crypto tokens with physical assets.
So what exactly makes gold as a service, a so-called first of its kind infrastructure.
Yeah, good morning, Ray.
So what we're, what we're doing with gold as a service is creating an industry-wide shared platform to really streamline and simplify access to the physical gold layer that is required to underpin any form of digital gold, including tokens.
The other element that's really important.
Important for us is the trust factor, which is really all of the digital products that are out there for gold in all different forms.
Each of those providers has to find a way that they can engender the trust in their, in their physical product and the gold that is underlying that.
So we aim to centralize that trust as part of the gold as a service offering.
And I think trust is a key word here.
So for the layperson who is watching, can you explain to us in practical terms how this technology, the underlying tech, guarantees that a digital token matches the bullion that is actually sitting in a vault?
Yeah, sure, and that's the, that's the most, the most important part of the platform.
So, so what we will do is take the physical layer of, of the gold market.
Now, just to put it in context and perspective, the majority of tokens and tokenized products are wrapping.
Existing native digital assets, so be that a stable coin wrapping a dollar or an equity being wrapped.
The difference with gold is it is a physical asset, and it's a physical asset that has the capability to be tokenized to the scale of billions and billions of dollars.
Yeah, that physical layer has, has a cost of carry.
It has a huge amount of process around it, which is finding liquidity in physical gold, responsible sourcing of that physical gold, custody and secure vaults of that physical gold, ensuring it.
Probably more important is the legal title around the physical gold that you are purchasing when you purchase a token.
And all of those things are you you mentioned at the beginning, cumbersome.
They can be cumbersome and they're also costly, and each individual product has to line up all of those contracts, find its own liquidity, and they, they create their own islands if you like.
So what we're doing really here is, is harmonizing.
We're orchestrating all of that into one single platform, plug and play if you like, so.
In a way we are creating a, a digitally native layer of assured trusted physical gold that you can plug into as an innovator for for your digital products, so simplification and and trust.
In 2026 has been quite the year for all asset classes, and there has been a spotlight on prices for gold, and we all know that trading gold involves a highly fragmented mix of dealers, physical dealers, as well as futures and even funds.
So how do you convince existing legacy players as well as custodians to adopt this shared infrastructure?
Yeah, so I think there's a, there's a huge opportunity for them here, which is essentially, as you say, that the gold, what's unique about gold as an asset is, is how long it's been around, the different types, the different forms, physical bars, coins, ETFs.
Then you, you look towards the innovation and the tokenization that's coming.
And I think that that is going to be huge and is a is a is a great opportunity for gold.
So I think where you have existing gold dealers, should we say, more traditional in bars and coins, they are looking to get into the digital side and offer their investors a digital product.
But again, it's very difficult to start that from scratch.
Match with the physical layer with the liquidity, the volume of gold that you need to get going there.
So we'd expect to see those traditional gold dealers wanting to plug into the platform.
Then the other aspect being all of the tokens that exist today, many of, many have come and failed unfortunately because primarily they haven't got that, that trust in the physical layer.
So those that exist today have the opportunity to be able to say, well, look, we'll, we'll, we will plug into the gold as a service layer which, which covers that whole physical aspect of the token that we have then benefit from the opportunity of a the fungibility that we are creating in that in that physical gold layer which can give opportunities at The product level for fungibility partnerships, new use cases in the in the Defi space.
So I think there's opportunity and incentives for either those in the traditional markets to be to be involved in the liquidity and the vaulting of gold and for those who are innovating and creating products to plug into the gold as a service platform. and finally Mike while I have you here of course with opportunity comes risks and challenges.
So what would you say are some of the regulatory or technological hurdles or challenges with this gold as a service and what is the actual timeline for market implementation going forward.
Yeah, so on the reg side that's, that's absolutely key because we are seeing the emergence of many recognized regulatory regimes globally.
We can look, be it stablecoins, be it real world assets, we can look to regimes in Europe with MIA, Switzerland, Gius acts in the US with stablecoins, and they're emerging quite rapidly.
So we want to ensure that that we can, we can create a platform that products that are adhering to and sitting within those regulations can plug in and share that same physical layer.
So the regulatory side of this is really important.
We will have a, we'll have a keen eye on that.
Timewise, timeline wise, yes, we are, we are developing requirements.
We're speaking with potential partners at the moment.
We've launched the white paper today.
We will, this is a this is a large project and it's going to scale, so we will be doing this phased.
I, I'd like to see phase one of of the platform standing up for the first physical layer and for the first partners to plug into that very early into into next year with some, with some potential um testing and some piloting in 2026.
So we are, we are working on this as of now and we expect to see it come to fruition quite soon.
Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us today.
I appreciate your time as well as your perspective.
Thank you.
