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Gold’s role as a financial asset is becoming increasingly abstract as most trading now relies on digital claims to bullion stored in vaults rather than the metal itself. A new initiative from NatBridge Resources and NatGold Digital pushes this idea further by tokenizing unmined gold reserves, allowing investors to trade digital rights to gold that remains underground. The effort uses technical resource reports to back the tokens, mirroring how traditional markets treat warehouse receipts or futures contracts. The move highlights a broader trend in which financial products drift away from the physical commodities they are meant to represent.
That said, though, “people who want digital tokens representing a certain amount of gold” is, in the abstract, a huge market. Central banks that keep gold reserves at the Fed or the Bank of England, gold futures traders, investors in gold ETFs: They all spend many billions of dollars on digital tokens representing a certain amount of gold underground. The NatBridge tokens are just, you know, gold in a slightly different part of underground.
