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Bitcoin Embraces Physical Gold with Tokenized Bullion Bars

Well, here’s something you don’t see every day. A new project is literally putting gold bars on the Bitcoin blockchain. I know, it sounds a little strange at first. But that’s what’s happening.

The idea is pretty straightforward, I think. They’re taking actual, physical gold bars stored in a high-security vault in London and linking them to digital tokens. Each token represents ownership of a specific one-ounce bar. They do this by inscribing the gold bar’s unique serial number directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain using the Ordinals protocol. It’s like a digital certificate of ownership that lives on the chain.

How It Actually Works

So how does someone get involved? You start by minting a token that corresponds to an ounce of gold. The team behind this, a marketplace called TRIO, handles the inscription process. Once that’s done, a real gold bar with that serial number is secured in a Brink’s vault. You can then buy, sell, or trade the digital token on their marketplace just like any other crypto asset.

But here’s the catch if you ever want the physical bar itself. To actually redeem the token for the real gold, you have to go through a know-your-customer (KYC) process with their partner, Swarm Markets. It makes sense, I suppose. Gold is a heavily regulated asset, and they have to play by traditional finance rules. You can’t just anonymously walk out with a gold bar.

Why Bitcoin for This?

It’s interesting that they chose to build this on Bitcoin and not somewhere else. Ethereum already has big tokenized gold projects like Tether Gold and Paxos Gold that are worth billions. But the co-founder of OrdinalsBot, Brian Laughlan, pointed out the symbolism. Bitcoin has been called “digital gold” for over a decade. So putting real gold on it feels almost poetic.

The project is starting very small. Apparently, only six gold bars have been tokenized so far. It’s a test, really. The hope is that if it gains traction, it could set a standard for how physical assets are represented on the original blockchain.

It makes you wonder about the future. This is part of a much larger trend called “real-world assets,” or RWA, where everything from real estate to government bonds gets tokenized. There’s over $26 billion locked in these protocols already. Maybe this is how more traditional value starts to flow onto blockchains. Not through hype, but through quiet, tangible things like gold.

It’s not a perfect system, and it’s definitely early days. But it’s a fascinating, practical step toward merging the old world of finance with the new.

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