Internet of Fine Gold → Standard → Checklist

Five questions to ask any seller of gold

Print this, take it with you, and use it on anyone — a bank, a platform, an app, a dealer, or the people who wrote it.

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1. What do you hold after the transaction — metal, or a record of metal?
2. Who is your counterparty once the transaction has closed?
3. What happens to your gold if that counterparty disappears tomorrow?
4. How do you exit: who buys it back, at what price, and in how many days?
5. Who can verify that it is what it claims to be — weight, fineness, origin?

There are no right answers printed here on purpose. Different answers describe different products, and several of them are perfectly good products. What the questions establish is which one you are actually buying — a thing, or a relationship with an institution that holds the thing. Both exist. Only one of them is what most people picture when they say the word “gold”.

Source: the five-question test of the IoFG standard · internetoffinegold.com/standard/checklist · CC BY 4.0 — copy it, print it, put it on your own site.