Overview
- The council published a white paper detailing a shared market infrastructure to connect physical gold custody directly with digital issuance and management.
- The proposed model standardizes custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance and redemption through an integrated physical, digital and connecting layer.
- Built-in continuous reconciliation, audit and assurance are intended to prove physical backing, improve fungibility and enable interoperability with existing financial rails.
- WGC invited industry participants to help develop the platform it plans to build, positioning the effort as a common backbone for new gold-backed products.
- Coverage cites a tokenized-gold market of roughly $5–$5.5 billion dominated by Tether Gold and Paxos Gold, whose bespoke vault setups highlight the barriers this framework seeks to lower; a pilot was planned for Q1 2026 but is not confirmed in these reports.