Great point...it will be interesting to see how Perth Mint explain and compare the crypto security to their physical vaults.
TLDR of below - this offers nothing to users that existing Perth Mint products already offer, this is just trying to cash in on crypto mania, pure marketing. I've never really understood the point of crypto gold. The key point of crypto/blockchain is that you can't trust other participants so you have a decentralised system with copies of the ledger that everyone checks so no one can cheat. But as soon as you add physical gold you have to involve a vault, and thus you have to trust the vault operator as you can't decentralise physical gold. So if you trust the vault operator to create/destroy the crypto gold units into a ledger then what is the point of a decentralised ledger, indeed it can't be decentralised as the many miners can't verify the vault operator's transactions. With Perth Mint the average person does not have any problem trusting them. So the only other point of decentralised ledger is maybe miners verify transfers between holders of the cypto gold units. However, Perth Mint has long had a very rigid policy to not allow third party transfers of metal. Reason is that this makes you a money transmitter and brings with it a whole lot of regulatory requirements to monitor these transfer transactions to ensure there isn't money laundering. Currently the only stuff Perth Mint has to do is ID verification and review of buy/sell (ie ins and outs) transactions. Adding third party transfers add extra cost. I will be very surprised if the Mint's crypto gold will allow transfers. If they do, there is no reason they couldn't then offer the same for their existing depository products, indeed if you are going to incur the additional cost, it make sense to extract as much value from that so they would extend it to all products. As to 24hr trading and low fees, well the Mint has an online account service that offers that already, so this crypto gold offers nothing new there. As for privacy, all transactions on a blockchain are public. With the Mint's existing online service no transactions are public, so a crypto gold is actually less private. I think the Mint saw what the Royal Mint did https://rmg.royalmint.com/how-rmg-works/ and how crypto is all hot, so now coming out with a me too. BTW, the Royal Mint's own FAQs https://rmg.royalmint.com/faqs/ show how pointless this is for both Royal and Perth Mint. Let me comment on their claimed "What are the benefits of Blockchain?" Everyone is free to view the blockchain and to verify the integrity of its mathematics So the Mint isn't able to building a computer system that can add and subtract? A publicly viewable and verifiable ledger means anyone can check that the total amount of RMG in issue is in line with the audited RMG vault holdings for instance So the Mint isn't capable, or can't be trusted, to make sure they don't engage in fractional backing? If people will trust the auditor to check physical, why wouldn't they just trust that same auditor to check the computer system entries for 100% backing? confirm that a payment went to the place they had thought they’d sent it And people couldn't do that same check in a conventional online system? Anyway, what is the point of checking, too late if it is wrong as blockchains are immutable. The blockchain may be viewed through the RMG BlockExplorer website Yes, lets make a system which is less private than a conventional database. blockchains have extremely high uptime. If you don’t want to trust that this will always be the case then you have the option of running your own node just to make sure. So the Mint isn't capable of maintaining high uptime on a web-based system? In the case of RMG, its blockchain acts as an irrefutable and indestructible record which, when paired with your cryptographic keys, can attest that you are the true owner of your gold. And doesn't a password on an online account also attest you are the owner? Bottom line IMO is blockchain does not provide any benefits that are not available using existing online accounts with conventional databases. BTW, how does https://www.infinigold.com/ "In collaboration with The Perth Mint InfiniGold has released a digitised form of gold based on digital gold certificates (a form of cryptocurrency within a private system). These certificates allow institutions to offer investors to trade and hold physical gold digitally 24/7" fit into the Mint's cypto strategy?
G'Day Bron from J.GALT. Why do you even bother to talk to these people? You have dealt with Gold & Silver and yet you are discussing imaginary currency. Wake up Bron please, don't even play their imaginary MONEY game. I know you are now working with the Weiner & his CO- BASIS crap, but F F Sake you are an AUSSIE, You should be able to sort the $#!T from the clay. _JLG.
Hi John, Well I haven't been bothering to commentate much, but this crypto imaginary money as you say has attracted a lot of attention and having worked at the Mint it is hard not to want to say a word or two, but I don't see how making a comment is "playing their game". As to Monetary Metals, it is more than just cobasis. If you want to get gold and silver circulating, being used as real money to fund productive businesses, rather than it just sitting in a vault gathering dust, then paying of interest on gold and silver, based on real businesses using real physical, is the way that will happen.
Thanks for the reply. Sorry about the tone of my post, but the 2 bottles of red I consumed last night was clouding my thinking, - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
That's the kicker - demonstrating that a business solution *needs* to use blockchain to solve a problem, as opposed to *can* use blockchain.
Something I seem to be pointing out to crypto bugs a lot lately (and IoT fanbois before that). If you're already operating in a trusted environment, why do you need the infrastructure of an un-trusted system?
Well if they are going to develop their own "Virtual Money" they need secure their own hot wallet totally offline. Anything online is totally hackable. You could not make this stuff up in a novel if you tried, but Perth Mint are finding so many alternative investment strategies in recent years it beggars belief. What will they come up with next?
Besides, it pisses me off no end that bitcoins have a public ledger. And that means juggling muliple wallets, before I transfer anything. ie if you know the public address of a wallet you can estimate the amount of its bitcoin balance. Some will be surpised how many people may it easy to at least estimate.
With an address you can know the actual balance not just estimate it. I use a separate wallet for trading/selling and quite often a tumbler such as shapeshift for depositing into it from other currency's to ETH, BTC etc.
I think this warrants a topic of its own if you wouldn't mind. I'm just a trader and holder but I'd be interested to learn how you enhance your security SX. My holds are in wallets and my trades are kept on the exchanges I use. What security steps do you take? Edit to add: I really like your sig too. Very optimistic. You sure you aren't a closet Libertarian?
Not really, unless the person was naive and kept all the coins in one wallet for the world to see. https://www.9news.com.au/world/2018/01/30/13/55/bitcoin-bandits-commit-first-cybercurrency-heist Send someone $1000 dollars worth... they check you have hundred. You have a knock on your door. Hence it best if you yourself have multiple separate wallets, and only a tiny amount in the wallet that you send or receive money from.
As a robust lesson/tute that would probably be best left to others far more tech savvy than me shiney. My main message to anyone who has sought any advice from me is to never ever disclose your personal key/phrase to any wallet to anybody you don't trust with your life. Make two back up's at least and store them safely offline. Any address can simply be looked up on a blockchain explorer and it will give you the balance and transactions through that wallet for the given Crypto. This is one of my BTC wallets used for Sales, Swaps, Hookers, Hit's and Coke, Bribing politicians and paying off officials from the Tax office. 1H6pQe13nk3GHk1isdyDGLsvqhJ1v2ftKy Enter it here https://blockchain.info/ under "search address" and it will give you all the transactions that have taken place, from, to,Totals in and out, current balance etc etc https://blockchain.info/address/1H6pQe13nk3GHk1isdyDGLsvqhJ1v2ftKy . It shows the wallets that funds were paid into and the wallet it was from. But who owns that wallet ? Or the ones the funds were paid into ? I could have two or ten different wallets, on different devices, or just on paper that are able to be resuscitated anywhere any time, stored on a Camera S.D card and saved as a no delete on a kids camera, or on a thumb drive hidden at the bottom of a lake or by a passphrase emailed via an encrypted email message. If you wanted to get creative there really are no ends to how many times you could send the same funds through shapeshift or different exchanges in different portions to muddy the trail before it ends up where you want it to. If on the other hand you are referring to personal security, personally it is no more different than securing your email and everyday internet usage. Hackers by and large are not interested in targeting the average Crypto holder and it really isn't worth their time unless they are Juveniles, to go after anything less than a million at a time. As long as your regular internet activity is robust and you aren't in the habit of "Downloading" suspect freak Porn files, (just stream it) you should be right. Treat your Crypto wallets as more at risk than your email or "Social Media" platforms and you will 99.8% of the time be quite safe. Passwords and personal Key's are the most vulnerable points with your Crypto wallets, ensure their safety and you should have no problems at all. All that assumes that you hold your Crypto in your own secure wallets youself, treat them as you would physical PM's, if you don't hold them you don't own them, and then there is alway's a third party risk. There are times when this is unavoidable, like when you deposit to trade on an exchange or the wallets themselves for a given Crypto are dodgy and/or are unreliable. I try to always keep such trades and holds under the 24/hr withdrawal limit myself on major traditional exchanges but I think that DEX exchanges will rapidly solve this aspect in the near future, if they are allowed to continue to exist that is. I think you would like them shiney once you get used to them. All peer to peer and you personally hold your cyrpto until you commit to the trade, Fee's are nominal and it is all decentralized blockchain action. Only drawback is that if you only have a crappy thirdperson wallet to withdraw to then.....What to do with the new Crypto ? Paranoia sell's a lot of hardware wallet's, basic simple precautions and logical security that people already follow with their everyday internet interactions are often more than enough, but people do need to be aware when using mobiles and handing over personal Identification. I personally have never given ANY personal Identification to any Exchange, Wallet, ICO, other than name and email addy, except for an Aussie company I have sold BTC to in the past. Get numerous wallet's they are free, get numerous trading accounts like Poloniex, binance, Bittrex etc they are free also, Have some core serious wallets that are known to be secure, keep your goodies in one or two of them and most of all keep ALL of your personal key's as secret as your personal sexual fantasies. No-one needs to know right ? P.S shiney I'm about as libertarian as they get without being called one M8. The only problem I have with you lot is that you are far to passive. I'd much rather be proactive than reactive once a threat to my and my cultures way of life is recognized for what it is. Stefan Molyneux I was wrong....
I think you missed the point. If I have a wallet address, I can simply look it up and check it's balance if it is BTC or something similar that has a chain explorer.