Internet of Fine Gold → Standard

The standard

Two instruments. A test of five questions, for the buyer who wants to check a seller in one minute. Seven criteria, for anyone who needs to say precisely why a given transaction is or is not in the category.

The five questions

Ask them of any seller of gold, in any country, including the people who wrote this page. They are ordinary questions with checkable answers, and a seller who cannot answer them plainly has told you something.

1. What do you hold after the transaction — metal, or a record of metal? Everything else follows from this one. A record can be excellent and still be a record.
2. Who is your counterparty once the transaction has closed? In some arrangements the answer is “nobody”. In others there is a chain of them, and the chain is worth knowing.
3. What happens to your gold if that counterparty disappears tomorrow? Not an accusation — a structural question. Ask it about firms you like.
4. How do you exit: who buys it back, at what price, and in how many days? The question buyers ask last and should ask first. An asset without a way out is a purchase, not a reserve.
5. Who can verify that it is what it claims to be — weight, fineness, origin? “Trust us” is an answer. It is simply a different answer from a mint, a serial number and a document.

One-page version for printing — made to be carried, not read on a screen.

The seven criteria

A transaction belongs to the Internet of Fine Gold when all seven hold. Fewer than seven is not a failing grade; it means the transaction belongs to a neighbouring category, most of which are legitimate, regulated and useful. The criteria describe a boundary, not a hierarchy.

01Bullion-grade metal#

The item contains the stated quantity of fine gold. Fineness and weight are declared by the seller and can be verified independently by the buyer.

Excludes jewellery, scrap, and pieces priced for their workmanship rather than their metal.

02A specific item#

Title passes to an identifiable coin or bar — not to a share, a claim, a fraction or an entry in a ledger. If the buyer's holding can be expressed only as a quantity of grams somewhere in a pool, this criterion is not met.

03Delivery into the owner's hands by default#

Taking possession is the normal outcome of the transaction, not a chargeable option layered on top of storage. A seller may also offer storage; the test is which one the transaction is built around.

04The transaction runs online end to end#

Selection, price, payment, tracking and delivery are all completed over the internet, with no required physical visit. This is the clause that distinguishes the category from the dealer's counter, which does the same job in a different medium.

05Transparent price#

The price is tied to a public quotation for the metal, and the full spread between the buying and the selling side is disclosed before payment — not only the premium on the way in.

The criterion requires disclosure, not a particular level. A wide spread that is stated plainly satisfies it; a narrow spread that only appears at checkout does not.

06A declared buyback#

Exit terms are published before purchase: what the seller buys back, on what formula the price is set, and within what period payment is made.

Again the requirement is publication, not generosity. A seller who publishes terms a buyer dislikes has met the criterion; a seller who answers “we will see at the time” has not.

07Verifiable authenticity#

The mint or refinery is identified, and the transfer of the item is documented, so that origin can be traced rather than asserted.

The criteria that cost the author something

A standard written by a seller is worth reading only if it is capable of biting the seller who wrote it. Two of these do.

Criterion 6 obliges any seller in the category — including JetGold — to publish exit terms in advance, which is exactly the commitment a seller would prefer to keep flexible. It is in the standard because the research is unambiguous: the way out is what buyers worry about most and ask about last. Note how it is written, though: it demands that terms be published, not that they be the best in the market. Requiring a price level would have been a claim we could not keep and no one could check.

Criterion 3 rules out the most profitable design in the industry. Storage generates recurring revenue; delivery ends the relationship and hands the customer an object they can walk away with. A category built on delivery gives up that annuity by construction.

Neither of these is a boast, and neither says the alternatives are wrong. They are the price of drawing the line where the definition draws it.

Using the standard

The standard is published under CC BY 4.0. Anyone may reproduce it, translate it, publish it alongside their own assessment, or apply it to their own business — including sellers who compete with its author. Each criterion has a permanent anchor (for example /standard/#criterion-6) so that a single clause can be quoted without the rest.

There is no certification, no registry fee and no membership. Nobody grants the right to use the term and nobody can revoke it: a seller either meets the criteria or does not, and buyers can check that for themselves in an afternoon. The moment a category starts charging for its own credentials, the credentials stop meaning anything.

The IoFG standard, version 1.0 · internetoffinegold.com/standard · published under CC BY 4.0 — copy this sheet, translate it, hand it on. Written and maintained by JetGold, an online seller of physical gold coins and bars; the disclosure is at internetoffinegold.com/who. Nothing here is financial advice, a recommendation, or an offer to sell.