A UK startup is attempting to move gold to the consumer spending heights Bitcoin has already achieved.
Gold is ironically following Bitcoin in an attempt to increase its versatility as a store of value.
The same week an analyst told CNBC gold “has never been used as a currency,” a UK-based startup is attempting to make it do just that.
Like the growing number of startups dedicated to making Bitcoin function as a day-to-day means of transacting, Glint hopes to allow consumers to effectively perform point-of-sale transactions in gold.
“There will be surges where digital assets will go up several times and then there will be a bubble when a genius would switch to gold. We’re on the cusp of it,” a post on the company’s blog last month writes quoting investment fund officer Charlie Morris.
While few concrete details are known about how Glint will operate once it launches at the end of 2017, it describes its offering as “a new global currency, account and app.”
As TechCrunch notes, the premise behind the idea may be simple in that gold is traditionally stable long-term, allowing users to benefit from reduced exposure to centralized fiat controls or Bitcoin volatility.
This stability has earnt gold its share of scorn from investors, however, with pro-Bitcoin bagholders noting the precious metal’s lackluster performance compared with cryptocurrency assets.
Glint has already been given the green light to operate in the UK by the country’s Financial Services Authority.
