Ep. 32 - Reinventing Money: What Happens When the Gold Standard Collides with Crypto & Debit Cards?

Frontier Tech Radio

What if your money was backed by real gold yet could be spent via an ordinary-looking debit card, same as any other.

With much lower transaction costs than you're used to - by a factor of around 10. Plus you got a 'yield' too?

We’ve featured asset-backed cryptocurrency raises before, including recently exploring the real estate space in episode 21 with Leaseum.

This time, Cayman-domiciled Kinesis is drawing on decades with the Allocated Bullion Exchange, an Australian institutional precious metal exchange with seven storage locations worldwide, and offering the next stage in that trade - by putting it on the blockchain.

As Ryan says, it’s the evolution of the Gold Standard.

The Kinesis cryptocurrencies, KAG and KAU, are based on physical gold and silver stored in vaults, which can be bought with fiat currency and then used in a variety of ways.

They can be spent, via a debit card; sent, between e-wallets; or stored, on the Kinesis Blockchain Exchange, which itself runs on a proprietary fork of Stellar.

The Kinesis team has looked at this from the outset as a way you can simply pay for a coffee. You could settle your bills, or send money to a member of your family in another country. So the speed of transfer was always a top priority – and by acting on the Stellar blockchain, these transactions are available at 3k/second – much faster than Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The gold and silver underlying all this is stored in independent third-party vaults using the ABX infrastructure, fully insured and audited, and the Allocated Legal Title remains with the purchaser rather than on the balance sheet of any other party – important, as the safest way to store precious metals.

The fees are set at 0.45% of any transaction – but this is partly offset by a unique system of yields, where monthly dividends are paid to all those depositing funds, bringing in their own gold and silver or holding the currencies – to encourage velocity in the Kinesis working as a monetary system.

Alongside all of this, the KVT – Kinesis Velocity Token – is currently available in a discounted pre-sale stage, launching its public sale for two months on 10 September, offering participants a proportional share of 20% of revenue raised in this system. This is immediately followed by the KAU and KAG pre-ICO, with full ICO from 1 March.

By which time the debit cards will be available and spending on that morning coffee can begin!

So why do all this? You can already invest individually in precious metals. This way, says Ryan, you’re investing in gold and silver, but without the costs for storage and insurance – and with the benefits of instant liquidity, and the yields for simply taking part.

Plus, there’s no guarantee that the world of fiat currency is safe. Banks worldwide can suddenly require bail-ins, there are currencies on the brink of collapse, and uncertainty about world economic events – including Brexit. So who wouldn’t consider shifting some currency out of those traditional areas, into something spendable, and backed by real-world assets?

Ryan’s final message is: watch this space. There are announcements and developments almost every day. KVT is already available on sale, with the KAU and KAG following before the end of the year. It really won’t be long until you can drop into Starbucks with your kinesis card and tap for your Skinny Vanilla Spice Latte knowing it’s backed by pure gold!