With nearly a billion USD invested in blockchain related startups [5]over the last two years, even the true luddites [6] are starting to take notice. Most still have no idea what this tech is capable of, so my job is to show all the light. On that note, I present a step-by-step guide to Collateralizing and Ensuring Physical Delivery of Gold Through the Blockchain - Faster, Cheaper, Safer!
What many may not realize is that Veritaseum [7], when used with our commoditized intellectual capital (Veritas [8]), can actually move the value of, and secure, physical assets through the blockchain. This is the trade architecture from a high level.
If one where to speculate or hedge the value of gold, you can receive the price value of gold in exchange for USD (or EUR, or even forex pairs such as EURUSD, or even other assets such as copper). The Veritaseum contract would look like this...
This is a speculative/hedging contract receiving the derivative gold price and paying the derivative USD price over the weekend to NYSE market close on Monday. Yes! This is cool, but suppose you actually wanted to take physical delivery of said gold rather than take cash settled exposure? Well, to do that you still enter into this contract with the seller of said gold, but set the expiry date at time certain in the future for physical delivery of said gold (to be provided and guaranteed by the transportation service). Let's assume that time and date is as stated above. Said transportation service feeds into the Veritaseum system (via a custom implementation created through a Veritas purchase [8]) and upon delivery confirmation of the physical gold the contract unwinds and the seller gets the buyer's funds plus a refund of their deposit which is put up as BTC collateral linked to the USD price - essentially paying him in USD up front - but locked into the blockchain. The buyer of the physical gold has been hedged into the GLD price this entire time and exchanges his gold-linked BTC for actual physical gold upon arrival as this BTC is released to the physical gold seller along with his USD-linked deposit. With such an arrangement, the gold purchase transaction can literally happen immediately, with all parties hedged into their respected requested exposures as they await physical delivery of the underlying.
If the physical gold does not arrive for whatever reason, the buyer still has his direct gold price exposure - basically a win-win situation. If the seller did not deliver the physical gold, then he/she will be forced to pay as if they sold and delivered the gold anyway by being exposed to USD price exposure relative gold and not receiving that deposit back until the end of the contract - whose expiry was defined as provable physical delivery of the gold.
But what about being exposed to BTC price volatility?
For those who do not want to be exposed to BTC volatility, simply open the advanced tab on the markets tab/interface and lever the contract to "outrun" your perceived exposure to BTC volatility. If you feel bitcoin will have an 4% standard deviation and you lever 5x, you will significantly mute said price delta in your trade results (the actual amount of leverage to use can be calculated using our trade modeling spreadsheet [9] - in this case, 5x is rather excessive for an expected 4% STD).
This what that "smart contract" would look like...
This is what the entire trade would look like, levered 5x with BTC featuring 4% volatility.
Download the Veritaseum wallet and all tools needed to conduct this transaction (sans the physical gold and BTC, of course) here [10].
Feel free to contact me directly here - I love to chat [11].