Our Journey Into the World of Gold-Backed Cryptocurrency

This is the story of setting up a blockchain startup in the gold cryptocurrency market and the price of keeping things fair. I'll try to keep it short and sweet. A couple of months ago, I embarked upon a journey that the world is unfamiliar with. After all this time, I feel it's finally ready to be revealed.

The Background Story of Aurus

As strange as this might sound, the story of this company all began in a vault, roughly 13 meters underground. Back then, I was discussing with the owners and managers of the vault how blockchain can revolutionize their business model. That was the first time proper asset fractionation through tokenization crossed my mind. It didn't take long to get from that to Aurus and what it currently stands for.

Aurus is a blockchain startup that aims to revolutionize the gold industry, using blockchain technology to make gold-backed digital currency easier to trade and use, opening it to the masses. So in certain ways, what Bitcoin is doing to money, we are doing to gold.

Long story short, we're creating a cryptocurrency that is 100% backed by gold. Gold-based cryptocurrency makes gold more accessible and cheaper to hold, spend and trade. Think about it as such: 1 AurusGOLD (AWG) represents 1 gram of 99.99% LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) approved gold, redeemable at any time for physical gold.

AurusGOLD (AWG) is a highly transferable gold-backed crypto token with which one can trade 0.00001 AWG or $0.0004 worth of gold. This is how we're making gold more liquid. Also, there are a few more "cool" perks. Since we're making gold easier to move around, we can create a blockchain-enabled debit card enabling AurusGOLD holders to spend their gold as a means of payment. 

The Work Behind Creating A Crypto Gold Blockchain Protocol

After finalizing the idea, we dove deeper into the blockchain startup space to learn more. My team and I went from conference to conference around Europe to learn more. What we discovered was exciting yet not very pretty. While many projects are working to develop ways to revolutionize the economy using blockchain technology for the greater good, there are also startups involved in the crypto space as a get-rich-quick scheme via ICOs or Initial Coin Offerings.

Many projects are operating without regard for regulation (which is indeed difficult to factor in as it is scarce, difficult to understand, and fragmented for those who attempt global businesses). The truth is that many people were investing significant sums in ICOs left and right without real due diligence. This space truly brought out the opportunist in people, and that's not all bad. It made things very interesting.

Our goal from the very beginning with Aurus was to bring real value to the world with this company, with a use-case for blockchain that requires the technology, a team that can deliver on a vision, and partners that are willing to see this company grow and do some good in the world.

The Cost Of Quality And Fairness

In short, a potential $20 million and probably another half of that spent on headache medicine and anti-depressants.

All jokes aside, it was challenging to take slow steps to ensure we build the right team and figure out all legal aspects of creating tokenized gold crypto before moving forward.

The struggle began with building the right relationships within the gold space. Our business model relies on having reliable gold partners. These gold partners must be willing to invest a lot of gold into the platform. Moreover, gold vault partners must accept a significant change in their traditional business model. For AurusGOLD to be a sustainable gold currency, the storage and insurance of the gold should not be paid for by Aurus as a company but rather by Aurus as a platform. Therefore, it was vital for us that the most secure vaults in the world agree to store and insure the crypto for a percentage of our revenue.

Our next big challenge was fairness. The problem is complicated to describe in full detail, but I'll try a short version. For our platform to be fair, AurusGOLD (AWG) tokens are subject to a transaction fee, which indirectly covers the storage and insurance costs associated with the storage and management of physical bullions. This way, AWG tokens do not contain any storage fees. 

It took a while to establish, but we found the solution to a fair and sustainable fee structure. If you read the Aurus Whitepaper, you will find that Ethereum blockchain transactions cost around $6 in ETH, at least for now. We plan to launch with this and see how the cost of fairness drops as this wonderful technology, blockchain, progresses.

Not cutting corners takes a lot of time, and time in the crypto space goes five times faster than in the real world. This put a lot of pressure on us to keep up with startups that did not pace as carefully as us.

A New Golden Token: The Reward Of Quality And Fairness

The previous paragraphs seem bleak. Yet, the price of fairness brings a great reward. I'm thrilled and proud to say that this company is shaping up exactly as I had hoped. For starters, we're backed by a fantastic software development company, Zitec, specializing in metal-backed blockchain technology. 

Couple that with our partnership with a few of the most prominent precious metals players in Europe that will provide any demand for gold with a virtually limitless supply, and things seem like they will pay off.

The reward is that the concept of Aurus is now backed by a solid and inspiring team that seems to attract people and companies who actually want to make a difference.

From my point of view, that is priceless. Time will tell where this journey leads. Suffice it to say that I'm happy with where it's already taken us, and I trust that our team will push as hard as possible to achieve our goals. The next steps are interesting as we show our idea to the world and start building our dreams.
 

Guido van Stijn,

CEO Aurus

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