Shitcoins + Gold = This. Wild stuff from MoneyStuff by Matt Levine.
“If you have a certain type of mind, or if you own a marginal gold mine, you might get to thinking that it is a bit wasteful — and environmentally destructive — to dig gold ore out of the ground, refine the ore into gold, form it into shiny bars of pure gold, and then stick it back underground so that people can trade electronic database entries entitling them to the gold. Why not leave it underground, skip all the other steps and just trade the database entries? If you own a gold mine, you can with reasonable confidence certify how much gold you have underground. That gold is there, in, uh, almost the same sense that the gold at the New York Fed is there. You could just go ahead and sell entitlements to it, without digging it up.
NatBridge Resources Ltd. is a gold mining company listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange. From its public filings, it seems that NatBridge has acquired various rights to parcels of land that contain gold, but it has never mined any gold. NatBridge has a better idea:
NatBridge Resources Ltd. (“NatBridge” or the “Company”) CSE: NATB | OTCID: NATBF |announced that it has reached an agreement with NatGold Digital Ltd. (“NatGold Digital”) to tokenize the subsurface mineral rights for Land Parcels 45 and 46 within the Cahuilla Gold Project in Imperial County, California, subject to successful completion of NatGold Digital’s due diligence, internal certification and title transfer. The transaction enables NatGold Digital to initiate its patent-pending digital mining process — the critical first step toward converting the project’s mineral resources into NatGold Tokens.
“Having spent decades in the global mining industry, including my work as Chief Innovation Officer at Barrick Gold, I’ve focused on how digital mining can offer a complementary alternative to traditional extraction—one that strengthens the industry while easing pressure on the environment. In this context, NatBridge’s work with NatGold Digital represents an important early step in applying these concepts, contributing to the natural evolution of how the sector may recognize and realize gold’s value,” said Michelle Ash, Executive Chair. …
“This agreement marks the first project we present to NatGold Digital for tokenization,” said Stephen Moses, Chief Executive Officer of NatBridge Resources Ltd. “It’s a key milestone toward our goal of transforming our technically compliant gold resources into tradable digital assets as a Premier NatGold Miner and creating liquidity and long-term value for shareholders.”
The theory seems to be that you get a technical report saying that your parcel contains gold — “Parcels 45 and 46 comprise approximately 12,290,139 tonnes containing an aggregate of 122,211 ounces of indicated gold resources, and 6,650 ounces of inferred gold resources at a 0.005 oz/ton cutoff grade” — and then you mint digital tokens representing that amount of gold.
