GOLDX, a gold-backed cryptocurrency developed by Southeast Asian fintech firm HelloGold, has earned the world’s first Shariah-compliance certification.

Certified by the Shariah Supervisory Board of Amanie Advisors, GOLDX is the world’s first fully operational Ethereum ERC20 token backed by 99.99% investment-grade gold. GOLDX received Shariah-compliant certification because its issuance process and audited asset holdings ensure transparency, certainty and immediacy of transactions.

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. As the international Islamic financial market continues to grow and draw interest from non-Muslim countries, the Islamic financial services industry’s total worth has reached USD1.9 trillion in 2016.”

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.”

GOLDX can currently be purchased directly from HelloGold at hellogold.org with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and it will be available for purchase on exchanges in the near future.

“HelloGold leverages innovative technologies to digitise and democratise assets such as gold, by creating products that reduce barriers of entry and enable savings and investments for the unbanked and underserved. We have already started this journey by enabling everyday people to buy physical investment-grade gold on our mobile app starting with as little as a fraction of a dollar. Now HelloGold can take its offer to the next level by bringing gold to the cryptocurrency market,” Robin concluded.

Unlike most cryptocurrencies which are not backed by a commodity, the GOLDX token is backed by physical allocated investment-grade gold. With each GOLDX token being represented by one gram of gold that is securely vaulted and insured, HelloGold ensures that GOLDX tokens are only issued according to the amount of gold physically held, and that this information is publicly accessible and verified independently by its vaulting partner. 

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have been estimated to be a potential USD10 trillion ecosystem. With daily trading volumes of USD250 billion in gold compared to USD2 billion in cryptocurrencies, HelloGold believes that GOLDX can become the stable digital token amongst the more popular but highly volatile cryptocurrencies—such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple – and an alternative to other asset backed tokens that lack audited and verifiable physical asset holdings.