Five thousand years of reserve asset,
now programmable.

Tokenized gold is a real-world asset (RWA) — a physical thing, in this case one gram of gold held in a vault, represented on a blockchain as a cryptographic token. When you own one fGLD token, you own a claim on one specific gram of gold. The token is transferable like any other digital asset; the underlying metal is stored, audited, and insured by the issuer.

The idea isn’t new — PAX Gold on Ethereum has done this since 2019, and traditional gold ETFs have done it (with less transparency) since 2003. What’s new is the programmability. A tokenized gold position can be used as collateral, lent, borrowed against, composed into structured products, and moved across DeFi protocols in ways that a paper ETF share cannot.

fGLD is the Cardano-native tokenized gold asset, issued and traded by NBX (Norwegian Block Exchange). Key properties:

• One token = one gram. The token is non-fractional. Your smallest unit of accumulation is a full gram — roughly $80–$110 at current gold prices. Fractionalization is on the roadmap but not live today.
• 1:1 backed by physical reserves. Every fGLD token in circulation is backed by one gram of physical gold held by NBX in secured storage.
• Cardano-native. fGLD is not bridged or wrapped. It exists directly on Cardano as a native asset, transferable between wallets without a smart contract.
• Oracle-priced. On-chain market value tracks spot gold via oracle feeds (Binance-equivalent, BitMark, PAX Gold-equivalent). Small spread and small lag in extreme market events are the main risks.
• Issued by a regulated exchange. NBX is publicly listed on the Oslo Børs. Reserve management is under regulated oversight.

Backing works in two directions. When new fGLD is minted, NBX must acquire the corresponding gram of physical gold and secure it in reserves before the tokens can be circulated. When fGLD is redeemed, the reverse happens — the redeemer gets fiat (or, in principle, physical gold, subject to NBX’s redemption process and minimum quantities), and the corresponding fGLD tokens are burned.

This mint-and-redeem mechanism is what keeps the on-chain price of fGLD anchored to spot gold. If fGLD traded far below spot, arbitrageurs would buy fGLD cheap, redeem for gold at spot, and pocket the difference — pushing the fGLD price back up. The opposite holds if fGLD traded above spot.

Gold has been humanity’s reserve asset for 5,000 years — the longest continuous store-of-value in human history. Stablecoins are six years old. Tokenized gold is the bridge between them: the stability and credibility of a hard asset, the composability and programmability of a digital one.

For a DeFi user specifically, tokenized gold opens a few things:

• Productive gold exposure. A paper ETF share sits in a brokerage account doing nothing. fGLD as collateral on Fluid earns yield (suppliers) or unlocks stablecoin liquidity (borrowers).
• Real-asset diversification. If you hold crypto-native assets (ADA, BTC, ETH), adding gold exposure via fGLD diversifies away from pure-crypto risk without leaving your on-chain workflow.
• Tax-efficient liquidity. Borrowing USDM against fGLD collateral is generally not a taxable event (unlike selling gold). See the Borrow Without Selling playbook.

The Coalition’s primary deployment partner, Fluid, has built a specialized fGLD lending market with parameters tuned for gold as collateral:

• LTV threshold around 90% — much higher than volatile crypto collateral, reflecting gold’s lower realized volatility.
• Partial liquidation (~10% loss) — instead of seizing 100% of collateral when the LTV line is crossed, Fluid’s fGLD market takes roughly 10%. This is the single feature that makes the Coalition’s flagship RWA strategy feasible at all.
• Oracle pricing from multiple feeds — Binance-equivalent, BitMark, and PAX Gold-equivalent references, aggregated to reduce single-source risk.

• Hold it. Pure gold exposure on Cardano. No yield, no leverage, just the metal.
• DCA into it with USDM. Accumulate fGLD on a schedule using USDM as the funding currency. Patient and defensible — the DCA into Gold playbook walks through it step-by-step.
• Supply it to Fluid as collateral. Earn borrow-side interest from users borrowing USDM against fGLD.
• Borrow against it. Unlock USDM liquidity without selling your gold. See Borrow Without Selling.
• Loop it. The advanced RWA Strategy uses fGLD as collateral to borrow USDM, buy more fGLD, and amplify exposure. Not for first-timers.

Tokenized gold inherits the general risks of any RWA: you rely on the issuer’s custody and audit of the physical reserves, on the oracle providers’ price accuracy, and on the regulatory environment surrounding tokenized physical assets. Additional risks specific to DeFi use (liquidation, smart contract, interest rate) apply when fGLD is used as collateral.

The full picture is on /risks — specifically the oracle risk, issuer custody risk, and (if using fGLD as collateral) liquidation risk sections.