Internet of Fine Gold → Definition

Definition

What each clause carries

The sentence is short on purpose, and every part of it is doing work. Read clause by clause, it is a filter rather than a description.

“online retail”

Retail, not wholesale, and not a market between professionals: the buyer is an ordinary person, and the whole path is conducted over the internet. This is what separates the category from the traditional dealer counter, and from institutional bullion markets.

“physical bullion-grade gold”

Metal of declared and verifiable fineness, in the forms the trade actually uses — fine gold coins and bars. Not jewellery, not scrap, not an index, not a promise denominated in gold.

“a specific, identifiable item — a coin or a bar”

The subject of the transaction is a thing, not a quantity. Title passes to that item and not to a fraction, a share, a claim or an entry in someone's ledger. This clause is what excludes unallocated and fractional arrangements, however well run they are.

“and takes possession of it”

The item ends up in the buyer's hands. Delivery is the normal outcome of the transaction, not a chargeable option layered on top of storage. A service that can, in principle, deliver on request but is built around keeping the metal is a different category — a legitimate one, but not this one.

“the entire transaction … completed over the internet”

Selection, price, payment, tracking, delivery and buyback — the whole loop, including the way out. A seller who will sell online but requires a physical visit to sell back has not completed the loop.

“and buyback”

Exit is part of the definition rather than an afterthought, because for a buyer it is the question that decides everything else. An item you cannot convert back is not a store of value; it is a purchase. The sixth criterion turns this into an obligation on the seller: publish the terms.

What the definition excludes

A definition that excludes nothing is decoration. This one excludes several large and perfectly legal ways of owning gold. They are not lesser; they are elsewhere.

• Tokenized gold — a ledger entry redeemable under an issuer's terms. Whatever backs it, the buyer holds a record, not the metal. See the grid.
• Vaulted, allocated and fractional gold, including what the industry calls Internet Investment Gold — the metal exists, but it stays with a custodian and the buyer holds a claim on it.
• Exchange-traded funds and gold-linked securities — financial instruments that follow the price. Retail holders generally have no route to the metal at all.
• Gold accounts and savings plans where the balance is denominated in gold but held by an institution.
• Jewellery and numismatic rarities, where the price is driven by workmanship or scarcity rather than by the metal content.

The line runs in one place only: after the transaction, do you hold the metal, or a relationship with an institution that holds it? Everything else in the definition follows from that question.

How to cite this definition

Take it. That is what the licence is for — the definition and the standard are released under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse, adaptation and translation, including commercially, with attribution. No permission is needed and none should be requested.

English is the master text. Translations are welcome, and the one rule that matters is that a translation should render this sentence and only this sentence — a paraphrase that drifts breaks the point of having a shared definition at all.

Status of this document

This is a definition proposed by a participant in the market, not a designation issued by a regulator or a standards body, and it is written that way deliberately. No one certifies compliance with it, no register charges for entry, and no fee is taken for the use of the name. A category that sells its own credentials has already spent them.

Written and maintained by JetGold — why that is disclosed here rather than hidden.