01
Bullion-grade metal
The stated quantity of fine gold, with declared and verifiable fineness and weight.
Internet of Fine Gold
The definition, an open standard, and a test you can put to any seller. Free to quote under CC BY 4.0.
Internet of Fine Gold (IoFG) is the online retail of physical bullion-grade gold in which the buyer acquires a specific, identifiable item — a coin or a bar — and takes possession of it, with the entire transaction (selection, price, payment, tracking, delivery and buyback) completed over the internet.
A category is not a slogan. It is a line you can draw through real transactions — and check. Below is the test, the criteria, and the grid that shows what sits on either side of the line.
The five questions
These are the questions to put to any seller of gold, anywhere, including the people who wrote this page. The answers place the transaction inside or outside the category. We do not supply the answers; the questions work on their own.
- What do you hold after the transaction — metal, or a record of metal?
- Who is your counterparty once the transaction has closed?
- What happens to your gold if that counterparty disappears tomorrow?
- How do you exit: who buys it back, at what price, and in how many days?
- Who can verify that it is what it claims to be — weight, fineness, origin?
Take the test with you — a one-page version made for printing.
What sits on either side of the line
Five ways of owning gold, compared by the properties of the transaction rather than by promises. A coin in your hands loses several of these rows outright; those rows are printed here as plainly as the rest.
Swipe sideways →
| Coin in your hands | Vaulted or fractional gold | Tokenized gold | Gold ETF | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you hold | A specific coin or bar, in your possession | A claim on metal held by someone else | A token recorded on a ledger | A security tracking the gold price |
| Your counterparty after the deal | None | The custodian and the platform | The issuer, the chain and the custodian | The fund and its chain of intermediaries |
| If that counterparty fails | Nothing changes for the item you hold | Recovery depends on how the metal was allocated | The token's redemption depends on the issuer | You are a holder of a financial instrument in a wind-down |
| Storage | Yours to solveA professional vault does this better than a drawer at home. | Included, professionally handled | Included, professionally handled | Not applicable to the holder |
| Entry threshold and divisibility | One whole item at a timeThe weakest row for a coin: you cannot buy or sell a tenth of it. | Fractional | Fractional, often down to very small amounts | One share |
The seven criteria
A transaction belongs to the Internet of Fine Gold when all seven hold. Each criterion has its own anchor so it can be quoted on its own.
02
A specific item
Title passes to an identifiable coin or bar — not to a share, a claim or a ledger entry.
03
Delivery by default
Possession is the normal outcome of the transaction, not a paid option on top of storage.
04
Online end to end
Selection, price, payment, tracking and delivery, with no required physical visit.
05
Transparent price
Tied to a public metal quotation, with the full spread disclosed before payment.
06
A declared buyback
Exit terms published in advance: what is bought back, on what formula, within what period.
07
Verifiable authenticity
The mint or refinery is known, and the transfer of the item is documented.
The full text includes how to apply the criteria — and a section on the two that deliberately make life harder for the people who wrote them.
Who is writing this, and why it says so
This reference is written and maintained by JetGold, an online seller of physical gold coins and bars. A seller defining a category has an obvious interest, so the interest is disclosed at the top rather than buried: you can weigh the definition knowing exactly who wrote it.
Three things keep it usable anyway. There are no prices, no catalogue and no transactions on this site. The definition and the standard are released under CC BY 4.0, so anyone — including a competitor — can take them and use them without asking. And the criteria are written so that they can fail their own author: criterion 6 obliges a seller to publish exit terms, which is a commitment, not a boast.
The standard is open to any operator who meets it. If you sell gold this way, you are in the category whether or not you ever speak to us.
Where the category is practised today: jetgold.com. That is the only outbound link on this site, and it leads to a shop — go there when you want to buy something, not to understand the category. More about the initiative.