A collaborative effort between the London Bullion Market Association and World Gold Council seeks to establish a worldwide registry and tracking ledger for serial-numbered gold bars.

According to the LBMA and WGC, representatives from the global gold supply chain are being brought together under an initiative to be able to capture the provenance and full transaction history of registered bars.

Demonstrating tech

The initial phase of the project will witness two distributed ledger companies — aXedras and Peer Ledger — demonstrating how their technology can best establish and maintain  a permanent record of a gold bar’s origination and chain of custody.

There currently is no universally recognized registration system for gold bars fabricated and sold worldwide, according to the London Bullion Market Association and World Gold Council.

Most gold bars in the marketplace are hallmarked with the name and logo of the manufacturer, stamped with the weight and fineness of the gold and usually have a serial number also stamped incuse on one side of each bar.

Seeking participation

The Gold Bar Integrity Programme is expected, over time, “to encourage all major participants in the gold industry to adopt this technology, and add to the global ecosystem, so that all gold bars are registered and tracked across the entire supply journey from mine to vault, and ultimately to end consumers such as jewellery manufacturers,” according to the WGC and LBMA.

“This will effectively digitise the global supply chain of gold bars.”

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