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Global Gold Tokens Overview

Global Gold Tokens are the foundational asset primitives of the Global Gold Protocol.

They transform physical, institutional-grade precious metals into non-custodial, legally structured, on-chain representations — without introducing issuer risk, pooled exposure, rehypothecation, or custodial dependency.

Global Gold Tokens encompass both:

  • Allocated metal assets (such as gold and silver bars and coins), and

  • Jurisdiction-specific, fungible metal tokens (such as USG and USS),

all governed under a unified legal and technical framework defined by the Global Gold Council.

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Allocated Assets: Digital Ownership of Physical Metal

Each allocated Global Gold Token represents real, non-hypothecated, unencumbered physical metal held in an approved vault by a Global Gold Reserve Partner.

The metal admitted into the system is never:

  • pledged,

  • rehypothecated,

  • lent, or

  • encumbered

by the protocol, the vault, or any intermediary.

All assets exist free and clear, governed by strict ecosystem standards established and maintained by the Global Gold Council.

Critically, users — not the protocol, not an issuer, and not a DAO — are the legal owners of the metal.

Ownership is represented on-chain through a Conditional Claim NFT, which functions as a digital ownership-claim representation tied to a specific, serialized bar or coin. This NFT grants the holder a legally structured claim pathway to acquire legal title to that asset once predefined conditions are satisfied, such as jurisdictional compliance and vault-level KYC.

The protocol does not custody metal, does not intermediate delivery, and does not exercise discretion over title transfer. It defines standardized rules under which ownership claims may be processed and validated.

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Fungible Tokens: Standardized Metal Liquidity

In addition to allocated assets, Global Gold Tokens include jurisdiction-specific, fungible metal tokens that represent unallocated liquidity derived exclusively from standardized, council-approved collateral.

These tokens (e.g., USG — United States Gold, USS — United States Silver) are:

  • minted strictly based on the fine metal content of eligible assets,

  • backed 1:1 by standardized physical metal collateral held under legal title in jurisdictional trusts, and

  • eligible for conversion into allocated metal representations through defined claim processes.

Fungible tokens provide liquidity and exchange efficiency, while allocated tokens preserve asset-level ownership and physical delivery rights. Together, they form a complete monetary stack for precious metals.

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Standards, Compliance, and Institutional Integrity

All Global Gold Tokens — allocated and fungible — must comply with Global Gold Council–approved standards, including requirements for:

  • metal purity and form factor,

  • refiner and vault eligibility,

  • legal segregation and non-encumbrance,

  • auditability and proof-of-reserves, and

  • jurisdictional compliance and redemption integrity.

These standards are designed to align with institutional custody practices, commodity market infrastructure, and jurisdiction-specific property and delivery laws — while remaining fully compatible with on-chain financial systems.

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What This Enables

The result is a precious-metal-backed digital asset system that is:

  • structured to represent user-aligned ownership interests,

  • fully allocated or strictly collateralized,

  • legally structured, not contractual,

  • auditable at the asset level, and

  • native to global, on-chain finance.

Global Gold Tokens are not synthetic exposure, IOUs, or pooled claims.

They are institutional-grade ownership and liquidity for gold and silver — expressed natively on-chain, without compromise.

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