Digix completed the first ever crowd-sale fundraising event on the Ethereum Blockchain in March 2016. It surpassed expectations by reaching its 5.5 million USD target. More impressive is it managed it in 12 hours. People from all around the world purchased a tokenized stake in a decentralised autonomous organisation. What was this organisation doing? Lead by Digix, they had agreed to develop a technology that would back up DigixDao tokens with grams of gold.
A fast-moving altcoin that been listed on Bittrex and Binance. DGD tokens have passed the $400 USD mark, and the community leading this project has proven themselves time and time again and sentiment, in early 2018 seems good for this altcoin, which I think still has a long climb ahead.
The DigixDao is an ERC20 token and this entire cryptocurrency is run on the Ethereum Network. Sounds like every other altcoin, right? but all the money raised in the crowdfunding event($5.5 million) is tied up in an Ethereum smart contract. The organisations’ funds are held to ransom, and the community demands progress for their release. DGD token holders are all stakeholders in a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation). Only with majority consensus can the developers and Digix team get money from the smart contract. Digix are a company building DigixDoa, It’s like they have pitched an entire idea and put funding for it into escrow.” “Digix provides a transparent, auditable, and secure protocol that leverages the full potential of Ethereum’s peer-to-peer decentralized consensus system and IPFS permanent document storage to facilitate the creation of transferable crypto assets on the blockchain.” – Digix Reddit Page. Each DGX Token Represents 1g of Gold How does that work? Through connections with publicly listed companies, Digix has set up transparent blockchain gold tracking. ValueMax, Singapore, is a publicly listed company. They supply London Bullion Market Association(LBMA) certified gold bullion bars through the Digix Marketplace. A first glance ValueMax looks like a dodgy pawn shop, but dig a little deeper. They sell a lot of Gold, and it doesn’t matter how ill-reputable the vendor DigixDao chooses to partner with, because Bureau Veritas, a world renowned asset Inspectorate, carries out quarterly checks on the quality and quantity at the DigixDao custodian vault to ensure accounting is upheld. MalcaAmit’s, are a logistics company, who will be acting as DigixDao’s gold couriers, and they have a state of the art facility near Singapore Changi International Airport. It’s 25,000 sqm of high security and climate controlled facility featuring cutting edge security technologies enhanced by green building engineering.
The purchase, transfer and authentication of gold to DigixDao is all managed by centralised companies. (gasp..horror). 2013 “The White paper’s response to centralised naysayers.” While the risk of collusion is a real possibility, it is at the cost of severe reputational and legal damages to the colluding participants. As these entities provide similar other services to other customers and such reputational and legal damages to their core business would be detrimental to their business, we can make a fair assumption that they will act in a rational manner.” Whitepaper
A Proof of Asset protocol tracks gold from the supplier to the custodial vault. Like other Ethereum transactions anyone can see the transaction. Entries are signed with private keys making all transactions permanent and immutable. No one can send gold they don’t have or remove the record of gold being sent. “If you 100% trust the company you are working with, being able to roll back transactions may seem more secure to you. If you don’t trust them though, that access makes the whole thing very insecure. With goldmoney, you need to trust them not to mess with the database. With Digix, I don’t have to trust them at all. I just need to trust the Ethereum network and Bureau Veritas, a very well known and well respected auditor-” Reddit User vman411gamer Where do DGX tokens come into all of this? In addition to DigixDao coin (DGD) DGX Tokens are minted via a Minter Smart Contract in exchange for equivalent PoA Cards that are sent to the Minter Smart Contract. For instance, a 100g PoA Card sent to the Minter Smart Contract returns 100 DGX tokens to the user.
Maker is a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) on the Ethereum blockchain which aims to minimise the price volatility of its own stable token, the Dai, against the US dollar. Dai uses smart contracts to create a decentralised stable coin that is pegged to 1 USD and backed by diversified collateral on-chain.
“The Maker team plans to launch Multi Collateral Dai with a three billion debt ceiling for DGX. This high debt ceiling for gold will enable Maker to more safely include ETH and crypto-correlated ERC20 tokens like REP and OMG with high debt ceilings as well. It also means that Maker will be a driver of billions of dollars of DGX demand.” Digi Medium For holders of DigixDao coin, this means increased transaction volumes and further stability of the cryptocurrency. DigixDao also offers an API that allows other applications and currencies to be built on top of the asset tokenization service.
I think that this altcoin shows a lot of potential. The currency’s backed up by gold claim, is an interesting prospect, but I think the more valuable investment opportunity is that dividends are paid out to token holders. A network built on blockchain offers immutability, security and it could potentially support large volumes of transactions. Uses for DigixDoa coin are the same as any cryptocurrency, but the stable price makes it better for services that are impeded by high volatility. Escrow services for example. It is a foreign concept to traders, but some people using cryptocurrency want to take the same amount of money out that was put in. DigixDao would be a good platform for crowdfunding. Other cryptocurrencies to come along and stake a portion of the currency’s value in gold using DigixDao. If only a tiny potion of ICOs choose to do this, DigixDao will be a wildly successful network. business and people could use DigixDao for P2P Lending and Microfinance. yield payments can be serviced at regular intervals with a penalty system in place for late payments. This has already been done with Bitcoin, but the volatile price makes it more unpredictable. A Dead man’s switch can be built as a service to allow wealth to be passed on in the form of crypto assets to a specified Ethereum address under the Digix system. According to Pamela Morgan, CEO of ThirdKey Solutions LLC, the number of clients seeking estate planning services has soared, following Bitcoin’s ever-rising price. If someone does pass away with a fortune in Bitcoin, it will die with them. I think that DigixDoa proposed solution to this problem shows just how long term this team is thinking. A Dead man’s switch can also be flicked if there is a problem with the cryptocurrency and investors need to get their money out in a hurry.
Binance Listed DGD in January. They did this shortly after Bittrex removed trading pairs due to growing pressure to conform to US regulation. For more information on buying DigixDao read Cointext’s complete guide to investing in DigixDao.