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CREEPING DOUBTS OVER US GOLD RESERVES MAKE CASE FOR TOKENIZED COMMODITIES
America’s Fort Knox, Kentucky gold reserves haven’t been audited in more than 50 years.
The tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) has reached a record high in 2025, driven by institutional demand for US dollar-denominated yield products.
As the technical barriers to RWAs continue to erode, commodities that require continual verification, like gold reserves, are likely to find a home on the blockchain very soon, according to Michele Crivelli, founder and chief operating officer of digital asset issuer NexBridge.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Crivelli explained why US Treasurys and other fixed-income instruments have been the biggest targets of tokenization.
“These assets offer stability, transparency and clearly defined yields,” said Crivelli. “There is strong demand for dollar-denominated instruments for various reasons, including the need to combat inflation in certain regions and preserve purchasing power in countries where you don’t have direct access to [US dollar] currency or investment.”
Tokenizing Treasury bonds is a natural first step in a market that Crivelli calls a “small, knowledgeable niche.”
However, it’s only a matter of time before more assets become tokenized.
“Beyond US Treasury bills, gold and other commodities are prime candidates for tokenization, thanks to their potential to reduce correlation with traditional markets,” said Crivelli.
“There are different tokenization models — some replicate financial instruments linked to gold, while others directly represent physical bullion,” he said.
Anxiety over US gold reserves grows
The tokenization of real-world assets like gold is taking on newfound importance as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seeks to cut wasteful spending and increase the transparency of US federal agencies.
Musk has even proposed using blockchain technology to track federal spending — a motion that was supported by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
Anxiety over federal gold reserves has grown since Zerohedge reminded Musk that the country’s Fort Knox, Kentucky deposits haven’t been audited in more than 50 years.
“Surely it’s reviewed at least every year?” Musk asked.
In response, US Senator Rand Paul has called on DOGE to investigate the status of Fort Knox’s nearly 4,600 tons of gold.
Blockchain technology can render these issues obsolete, according to Crivelli. Tokenizing bullion on the blockchain can increase the security and transparency of gold reserves, which enables “continual verification of gold’s ownership,” he said.
In the meantime, betters on Polymarket say there’s a 50% chance that DOGE will audit the Fort Knox gold reserves by May of this year.
@ Newshounds News
Source: CoinTelegraph
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TETHER CO-FOUNDER IS WORKING ON YIELD-BEARING STABLECOIN RIVAL
▪Pi Protocol is set to launch in the second half of the year
▪The project will let minters of stablecoin earn yield
One of the original founders of Tether is backing a new stablecoin project — one that will compete with the world’s most traded cryptocurrency.
Reeve Collins, who along with Brock Pierce and Craig Sellars launched precursor to the original stablecoin, served as Tether’s first chief executive officer from from 2013 to 2015.
He is chairman and co-founder of Pi Protocol. The so-called decentralized project is expected to debut on both the Ethereum and Solana blockchains in the second half of this year or sooner. No financial terms were disclosed.
Pi will use so-called smart contracts, or computer programs that automatically execute transactions between parties like exchanges and market makers, to mint its USP stablecoin.
As a reward, the minters will earn another token, called USI, as yield. The stablecoin will be backed by yield-bearing real-world assets such as bonds.
After initially being used in crypto to facilitate trading and serving as a refuge from the extreme swings in the prices of most other tokens, stablecoins have been touted more recently as a method of payment.
The idea is to let industry participants marketing the stablecoin to get the lion’s share of the profits from it — something that doesn’t happen with Tether, which is supposed to be tied one-to-one to the dollar. Tether, which has grown to have over $140 billion in USDT tokens in circulation, profits from investing the reserves backing the coins. Tether said it had about $13 billion in profit last year.
“We view Pi Protocol as the evolution of stablecoins,” Collins said in an interview. “Tether has been extremely successful in showcasing demand for stablecoins. But they keep all the yield. We believe 10 years later the market is really ready to evolve.”
Collins, 49, and his partners sold Tether to the operators of the crypto exchange Bitfinex in 2015, when the USDT stablecoin’s market value was less than $1 billion. Collins has since co-founded several other companies, including NFT platform BLOCKv.
“I very much supported Tether over the years, it’s an extraordinary invention that we’ve developed,” Collins said. “Hindsight is always 20/20,” he said when asked if he regretted selling his stake in Tether.
Stablecoins have gotten a boost this year, with the election of US President Donald Trump. In his first days in office, Trump released an executive order promoting US dollar-backed stablecoin adoption, and Congress is working on a bill that offers a regulatory framework for stablecoins in the US.
Major financial companies like PayPal Holdings Inc. are already issuing stablecoins, while many others are considering issuing them.
Pi Protocol seeks to take advantage of the fast growth of not only stablecoins, but also real-world assets, a category which companies like the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock Inc., already play in.
The stablecoin will be over-collateralized by assets like Treasuries, money-market funds and insurance products represented on blockchain ledgers. Pi’s smart contracts will evaluate the collateral’s value and enforce an over-collateralization ratio, according to the project’s whitepaper.
“You want assets that are non-correlated to crypto that are mid- to high yield, low risk,” Pi Chief Executive Officer Bundeep Singh Rangar, who previously founded insurance platform PremFina, said. “We have a mechanism that assesses the quality of the asset. They are ones that are vetted on their loss ratio and origination of where they are coming from.”
Pi will be ruled by a governance token, USPi, whose holders will get a cut of the platform’s revenue, coming from sources like yield from minting the stablecoin on the platform. The token’s users will be able to vote on decisions such as setting risk parameters, adjusting collateral policies and distribution of protocol revenue. The project’s team and advisors got 25% of the governance token supply. A pre-sale of the governance token is currently ongoing.
@ Newshounds News™
Source: Bloomberg
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