Exploring ICP | #2 - Trading & Holding Physical Gold In Crypto Smart-Contracts (feat. Gold DAO)

So maybe you have heard, the system is finally going down. We are about to witness the mother of all collapses in debt around the world, a meltdown that has been long coming: for more than 40 years. And this time it might actually be the big one.

What to do?

Well, depending on who you listen to, you may want to store your financial assets in something that cannot be arbitrarily diminished in valuation. Where fiat is a ghost, gold has always been the number one asset for times of economic upheaval and the gang's world-dominating mischief.

But gold seemed so inaccessible to crypto-minded people. Sure, you could go out and buy a bit here and there with the non-existent bills in your HARDWARE wallet, but what if there was a way to shift your digital assets into gold to avert a market meltdown, rather than into a fiat currency that is itself the victim of devaluation?

Well, there is a way!

I have been playing around with Gold DAO on ICP and man, I am super impressed.

What is Gold Dao and why should I care?

Unlike the CFD markets, Gold DAO offers crypto-investors a direct path to owning physical gold. How is this different to digital gold certificates? It is different because the gold tokens on Gold DAO are 100% backed by physical gold in their storage facility in Switzerland. It is like one of those services online where you can buy gold and have a unique serial number that is yours and represents a real physical piece of gold - only here, it is all on the blockchain.

Every piece of gold in the vault has a serial number, and each serial number correlates to a specific NFT people can buy. Then they either hold that NFT, they convert it into smaller more tradeable units (called "GLDT") OR they go to Switzerland to redeem their actual gold from the actual vault.

Gold DAO regularly publishes audits of their gold holdings, so users can be sure that the gold they bought actually exists in reality.

Needless to say this all runs like a charm on the internet computer. Gold DAO is entirely community governed, meaning holders of the governance token can decide on the future of the project, vote for or against proposals or stake their governance tokens to earn a share of the staking rewards of the Gold DAO project.

Why do we need this?

Well, that depends on how you see the coming months playing out. If we INDEED get an absolute meltdown of the debt based monetary system, and all the capital will have to find some place to go... you can be reasonably certain it is gold. Some may say Bitcoin but the utility of BTC is sort of a joke in 2025, and I feel people will catch on eventually. Gold is the grandpa of solid assets.

"Yes, but gold is so expensive already?"

I used to think that way too. Until I realized that gold is NOT getting more expensive, but rather: fiat is buying less and less because it is "enjoying" less and less faith. Think about this logically: If you stayed in dollars while gold keeps going up in dollar terms - your wealth would be better secured in gold than in dollars. The naive plan would be to wait until gold valuations reach dazzling highs, and then to swap back into cryptos of your choice. Or get it out the vault before governments seize all vaults, lol.

Or in other terms, waiting for a major dip in crypto in DOLLAR terms may be a good trade. But what if your money didn't itself lose value on the way down? You would be short the USD & short crypto, long gold.

So effectively, you can see GLDT on ICP as a sort of stablecoin, that is always backed by something tangible, creating an immensely powerful trading instrument. Sure the liquidity could be much better because noone yet cares about ICP or GLDT, but I am telling you this WILL make some big waves as gold keeps climbing mindnumbing highs in the months and years to come.

Is this trading advice? NOPE! You make your own decisions. I may not know what I am doing at all! Never forget!

But putting the pieces together with everything I see, why would I want to sit in a devaluing fiat currency when I could shift into an asset that physically holds its value by its very nature? Gold IS the ultimate stablecoin. And I haven't even mentioned all the other things the Gold DAO team is working on. In addition to GLDT - where 100 GLDT ALWAYS equal 1g of physical gold - they are now working on a usd stablecoin that IS backed by gold. Not sure if I am interested, I am quite content knowing that - should the major gold rush commence into the hyperbolic - I am not losing value, nor merely holding value - I am GAINING value as opposed to sitting in digital fiat, waiting for a major nightmare day in crypto... to then go all in. Risky I know, but what do I have to lose?

And since this is on ICP there is zero risk of an exchange refusing withdrawal of funds, I can swap GLDT into ICP, BTC, ETH, Solana and others ON-CHAIN and that is just miles ahead of where the industry still is.

If you want to learn more about the Gold Dao project, the tokenomics and why you should consider checking it out, this interview will help you out massively. Let the crash come!!!

EDIT:
I gotta correct in that there is not enough liquidity on most pairs right now to make effortless swaps. The coins I mentioned are now supported ON ICP yes, even BNB now, but swapping GLDT to any of the other cryptos is still not so straight forward because you need swap services to actually provide those pairs. And there isn't yet the liquidity to allow this.

That said, GLDT-ckUSDT, and GLDT-ICP pair are enough to get in and out of GLDT. ckUSDT can then be minted back to ETH usdt, or be easily swapped into ICP to be moved off the network.