We’d like to announce two important initiatives that help ensure the safety and integrity of the gold owned by SendGold customers, and help to further progress the global standards for digital gold.
Since the very beginning, we have taken the view that outright individual ownership of physical gold metal is the ultimate form of SendGold customer protection. Gold in our customers’ accounts is their individual property, fully protected by the legal guarantees provided under Australia’s property rights laws, some of the strictest in the world.
Individual physical bullion ownership with SendGold means that in the unlikely event that something were to happen to our company our customers could still retrieve the value of their gold because it is held on their behalf separate from our company assets. SendGold customers own their gold and are the only ones who can give instructions as to what they would like to do with it.
Inititiative #1: the LBMA Global Code of Conduct
We’re pleased to report that we believe SendGold is the first digital gold provider globally to formally sign the London Bullion Market Association’s new Global Precious Metals Code of Conduct.
The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) is the peak global body ensuring the integrity and safety of the world’s bullion markets. In April 2018 after extensive consultation with their member firms and industry providers they announced the creation of the Global Code of Conduct for the gold bullion industry.
The Code of Conduct is a formal pledge covering the full spectrum of provider activities including ethics, compliance, governance and risk management, as well as all aspects of pre-trade, execution and post-trade business conduct.
By formally signing the Code SendGold is committing to our customers that we adhere to its principles and practices in the delivery of the SendGold service. We do this to further demonstrate to our customers that the safety and integrity of the SendGold service is our top priority and that we will continue to ensure that SendGold is a safe, secure, fast and fair way to own history’s most reliable investment asset.
The Global Precious Metals Code is available for review at the following link: http://www.lbma.org.uk/global-precious-metals-code
Initiative #2: WGC Internet Investment Gold Product Provider Guidance
SendGold has been asked by the World Gold Council (WGC) to participate in the establishment of their Product Provider Guidance standards.
New mechanisms claiming to convey gold ownership via the internet have proliferated in recent years. At SendGold we have found that in more than 90% of cases a careful legal analysis of actual rights to gold under various schemes falls short of meeting a robust prudential ownership standard. In numerous cases we see no evidence at all that the customer actually owns gold.
“Blockchain gold” initiatives in particular tend to be long on marketing claims and short on delivery of actual legal rights to gold. Some providers make outlandish claims (“We will take the proceeds to buy gold mining equipment in Central Africa!”), but even established blockchain gold providers often resort to hand-waving when discussing the legal link between an encrypted keypair in their system and a physical bar of metal in a vault.
To address this knowledge gap in the market the WGC has embarked on a major standards-setting initiative. The result will be a set of documents entitled The WGC Internet Investment Gold (IIG) Provider Guidance. The documents are intended to assist consumers in making informed decisions about gold providers and to assist gold providers in architecting systems that safely and securely provide reliable gold ownership to those customers.
Our prior dealings with the WGC demonstrated to them not only that we built and operated the SendGold system at a high standard with regard to integrity but also that our team was very qualified to deliver SendGold products in a manner that ensured that our customers’ gold was secure.
