You can now buy gold-backed NFTs with the mining carbon footprint offset

Digital asset wallet provider Lohko and London-based tech firm Mattereum have teamed up to launch nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, that are backed by gold and have carbon offsets attached.

According to a May 26 announcement the tokens represent ownership over physical gold bars that are stored in a vault in Singapore managed by partner Bullionstar.

Each NFT represents an underlying bar of gold, with both the token and the physical bar of gold sharing a unique serial number. The tokens are also sold with a warranty ensuring NFT’s owner “has full legal rights to redeem the physical gold bar.”

The NFTs have been listed on popular Ethereum-based NFT marketplace OpenSea, with the tokens representing either one ounce of gold, 10 grams of gold, or 100 grams of gold respectively.

One of the 100 gram NFTs also features 3D digital art depicting an animated bull on a gold bar. A version of this token appears to have been first listed on OpenSea for 7 Ether three months ago.

Lohko’s CEO, Antti Saarnio, emphasized the enhanced utility of tokenized gold over its underlying physical counterpart, stating:

“Gold’s main limitation as an investment category has been that its ownership is difficult to transfer [...] NFT gold owners are able to sell their gold anywhere and to anyone in any blockchain marketplace. This is a huge benefit for gold investors providing them better liquidity and higher sales margin.”

Lohko is not the first to tokenize gold, with the Perth Mint Gold Token claiming it was the first token backed by “government-guaranteed gold” to launch on a public blockchain in October 2019, while asset manager Coinshares and wallet provider Blockchain teamed up to launch a Swiss gold-backed token on a private Bitcoin sidechain that same month.

In May 2020, centralized crypto asset lending platform Celsius launched its yield product for Tether’s XAUT gold token.