JPMorgan financial holding intends to use its blockchain Quorum for tokenisation of gold bars, according to the Australian Financial Review. After the procedure is completed, they will correspond to electronic tokens instead of paper certificates accepted now.

The advantages of tokenisation are obvious. First, the ownership of the ingots and their transfer to another person will be reflected in the general register (in this case non-public). Entries cannot be changed without the appropriate authority. Secondly, the tokenised property can be relatively easily split. Thirdly, its shares can be traded without the participation of a third party.

The head of the JPMorgan blockchain-initiative Umar Farooq explains:

They wrap a gold bar into a tamper-proof case electronically tagged, and they can track the gold bar from the mine to end point – with the use case being, if you know it’s a socially responsible mine, someone will be willing to pay a higher spread on that gold versus if you don’t know where it comes from. Diamonds is another example.

This approach makes the supply chain more transparent and the market more liquid.

The technical side

The blockchain Quorum JPMorgan was created on the basis of Ethereum in 2016. Now it is a platform for interbank payments.

In June 2018, it was tested by the Central Bank of South Africa, which concluded that the processing of the usual amount of daily transactions with its help is carried out in just two hours.

The holding is considering using this network for trading with various assets.