Santacruz Silver Mining reports fatality at Tres Amigos mine in Bolivia
Tres Amigos mine, a part of the Caballo Blanco Group of mines, has resumed operations after it was shut down following the incident.
A gold exchange company that borrows some technology from Bitcoin has raised $3.5 million for a series A financing from a group of investors that include PortVesta Holdings, Soros Brothers Investments, PowerOne Capital and Sandstorm Gold.
BitGold, which is based in Toronto and announced the funding late last month, uses digital payments to help acquire, store and spend gold. The company is focused on the blockchain technology, which allows for the “. . . decentralized record confirmation and global value transfer.” The co-founders of BitGold explain in a news release:
“Blockchain technology has unleashed a wave of payments innovation that will empower people the world over by lowering costs and increasing access to safe and transparent financial services,” said co-founder Josh Crumb. “We see gold, the asset bitcoin was designed to mimic, as an important element in this empowerment. The flexibility of the BitGold platform allows gold to be a core savings account coupled with digital currency for seamless global payments, or as a natural-world storage and safety valve for an inevitable internet of money. The internet of money should be rooted in choice and individual empowerment, and we provide that in a flexible and secure platform.”
“Since my days as a professional investor I have wondered why there’s no easy way to own and spend gold in a legal, transparent, and tax-compliant manner,” said Founder and CEO, Roy Sebag. “Technological breakthroughs in decentralized payment technologies such as the blockchain and ripple have created a historical opportunity to solve one of the main challenges preventing gold from being useful again in daily transactions. True gold ownership requires gold to be safely vaulted and stored, making it extremely difficult to spend, especially in micro-transactions. At BitGold, we solved this problem by developing a platform that is part gold exchange, part payments technology and part custodian, resulting in a powerful user experience that advances gold from a physical element to an instantly accessible unit of account and store of value for the internet, an operating system for gold.”
A great example on the power of blockchain and how it can solve a common transaction problem is written up by Fred Wilson.
Comments
Dale Holmgren
The best strategy is to buy Sandstorm. Since Sandstorm owns BitGold, it can benefit from that investment, while also benefitting from the optionality on the mines it invests in, i.e. a gold option on increasing the mine production, with a very long expiration date. Sandstorm prices are suppressed due to impairment write downs, but they will not continue year after year, so eventually we’ll have not only positive cash flow but positive earnings.
Japan just announced a 5.7% fall in Aug machine orders, the third consecutive monthly contraction. This despite heavy monetary stimulation by the BofJ. I expect doubling down on QE, which should be great for gold. I think we are poking around the low for gold.