Malaysia-based firm HelloGold has received a sharia-compliant certification for its gold-backed cryptocurrency dubbed GOLDX from Amanie Advisors, a Malaysia-based Islamic finance consultancy, Reuters.
Robin Lee, CEO and Co-founder of HelloGold, said, “Having earned the world’s first Shariah-compliance certification for our GOLDX token, HelloGold has opened the door to over a billion Muslims to access a new financial product.”
Robin continued, “Our GOLDX token will help accelerate financial inclusion by providing Muslim customers with transparent and safe access to gold through a digital token, as well as the ability to use their stored gold as value that can be traded beyond the HelloGold system.”
Unlike other cryptocurrencies the GOLDX, which was launched at the end of last year, involves the issuance of a token backed by physical gold stored in a Singapore vault and transactions must be completed within a defined time period.
This means the issuance process and audited assets can address transparency, certainty and immediacy of transactions - important principles in Islamic financial contracts.
GOLDX can currently be purchased directly from HelloGold at hellogold.org with Bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin) and Ethereum (ETH/USD), and it will be available for purchase on exchanges in the near future.
HelloGold plans to expand its gold platform into Thailand in coming months, while potentially adding a third market by the end of the year.