Press Release: Friday, 09 August 2019, 11:00 CAT | Source: AltCoinTrader
This week saw an interesting development for investors of digital assets in South Africa. On Monday 5 August, AltCoinTrader went live with the trading of real gold and silver on their exchange. In what was a first for African cryptocurrency exchanges, the company has already attracted hundreds of thousands of rands in trading volume in the days following the launch.
Trading went live at 11am on Monday this week, with 11.32 ounces of gold trading hands in the first 30 minutes, while 41.49 ounces of silver were traded within that same time frame. Within the first three days of trading, a combined total of R1.2 million worth of the assets changed hands.
While making up a significant portion of traders worldwide, South African cryptocurrency traders still pale in comparison to the institutional trading volumes seen in traditional financial markets in South Africa alone. This is something CEO Richard de Sousa believes will change in the long term:
“It is becoming clear that Bitcoin and associated cryptocurrencies are significant stores of value, and as more people realize this, trading volumes in this new asset class will continue to rise.”
In a recent interview with China Global Television, de Sousa said that the deflationary nature of precious metals like gold and silver are why his team considered introducing digital metal trading: “Cryptocurrencies are seen by many enthusiasts as being outside of the bubble of traditional financial markets, and thus can be a hedge against potential recession. Precious metals have been treated the same way for generations, so it made sense for us to develop a secure, digital method for our users to diversify their cryptocurrency portfolio into these precious metals.”
All gold and silver purchased and traded on the exchange is backed by a real-world 1 ounce coin equivalent. In the case of gold, the asset is represented by 1 ounce Krugerrands, while silver is a standard 1 ounce silver coin. The company is quick to emphasize that no physical assets are kept on their property, with the 1 ounce coins held in reserve with an unnamed retail partner in South Africa. Should users wish to cash out their gold and silver bought on the exchange, they can only do so in 1 ounce units, and can either select a hand delivered courier, or an option to collect from said retail partner.
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This article is a Press Release received from AltCoinTrader. Global Crypto did not receive any form of compensation for its publication, and as this material is deemed newsworthy for the Southern African blockchain industry, it was thus published accordingly.
