The fund is issued through Libeara, a tokenisation platform backed by Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures. It is designed to track the performance of the gold spot price and generate a yield.
MG999 will issue tokenised fund units that correlate to the spot price of gold. The fund is developed in partnership with FundBridge Capital and offers institutional investors exposure to gold through blockchain-based tokens issued on Libeara’s ledger.
Essentially, Mustafa pledges its physical gold assets for loans and gold tokens are issued based on the value of the pledged gold. Investors put up cash, which is loaned to Mustafa at a specified interest rate and tenure, with the option to sell the gold tokens they invest in.
During the loan tenure, Mustafa pays interest to investors, which is then paid to the investors when the gold assets it owns are sold. As such, due to stock depletion and replenishment, monthly pricing refreshes the pricing and the interest rate that Mustafa has to pay, i.e., a variable interest rate. At the end of the tenure, Mustafa pays back the loan in full.
See also: Gold digging, pawning and jewellery retail lift off with gold
What is gold tokenisation?
Amid record-breaking gold prices, Mustafa is by no means the only entity already in the digital gold age. Andrew Scott, Marketnode’s head of digital assets, says gold tokenisation refers to the creation of a digital representation of gold on a blockchain.
The token could be the digital twin of physical gold, or a gold-related investment such as a fund; blockchain is a shared, immutable digital ledger that records transactions involving assets within a business network, providing a single source of truth.
See also: Singapore investor demand for gold up 48% to 9.6 tonnes as WGC confirms historical 2025 for asset
Marketnode is a MAS-regulated digital market infrastructure operator and recently collaborated with Lion Global Investors to pioneer on-chain access to the LionGlobal Singapore Physical Gold Fund on the Solana blockchain.
Based on the company’s experience, Scott adds that issuers of gold tokens have several considerations when designing one. These include the legal structure, how accurately and legally each token represents the underlying physical gold holdings, the choice of blockchain, and product features such as the attributes that can be attached to the gold token.
Professor Campbell Harvey, a decentralised finance (DeFi) expert, explains that tokenised gold is an alternative payment method and has the potential to compete with fiat currency. In an email interview with The Edge Singapore, Harvey, who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, likens the use of tokenised gold to a return to the gold standard, but in a more democratised form where its use is not imposed by banks but instead chosen by consumers.
A growing market?
Industry players observe growing interest in digital gold products. For one, HSBC’s retail gold token has surpassed US$1 billion ($1.26 billion) in trading volume, with demand for tokenised gold “particularly explosive” in Asia, says Scott.
According to crypto exchange CEX.IO, the global tokenised gold market cap is around US$4.4 billion, up 177% in 2025. The growth is impressive, but for context, gold is overall a US$32 trillion market.
Daryl Ho, senior investment strategist at DBS Bank, tells The Edge Singapore that tokenised gold remains far less popular now in the absence of clear legal and ownership frameworks. “Physical gold and paper gold instruments such as ETFs continue to be the primary avenues for gold exposure,” he adds.
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Nonetheless, there seems to be strong momentum in both volume and users. According to CEX.IO, tokenised gold trading reached US$178 billion in 2025, with US$126 billion worth in the final quarter of the year; the number of tokenised gold holders rose by more than 115,000 in 2025, 14 times faster than in 2024.
Cici Lu, head of research at Matrixdock, sees sustained growth in the tokenised gold market and says that traditional bullion dealers and wealth intermediaries are increasingly engaging with tokenisation as a modern extension of gold bullion. Matrixdock, a platform that provides tokenised access to real-world assets, launched a gold token in 2024. Each gold token represents one troy ounce of LBMA gold with 99.99% purity stored in secure vaults.
Lu notes that, according to on-chain data, there were more than 500,000 transactions for Matrixdock gold in 2025, with cumulative secondary-market trading volume exceeding US$26 million, driven mainly by decentralised finance use cases, reflecting “grassroot liquidity” arising from tokenised gold. According to Lu, early adopters of tokenised gold tend to be younger, crypto-savvy investors who “value the speed and flexibility” of blockchain settlement.
Advantages of tokenised gold
Tokenised gold holds several advantages over traditional physical bullion and paper instruments such as ETFs. Tokenised gold can be settled 24/7 and almost immediately. In contrast, the trading of ETFs and funds has fixed hours and is subject to settlement delays, says Prof Harvey. Also, tokenised gold can be fractionalised to 18 decimal places, which means trades can be done at lower price points and thus be more liquid and accessible to more investors.
The World Gold Council (WGC) believes that digitalisation (or tokenisation) holds “great” potential for the future of gold as a digital asset. As described in a paper with The Future Laboratory, WGC expects digital gold to create “transformational” opportunities for both markets and investors.
WGC envisions a way for gold investors to not only buy gold directly from a vault but also use it as collateral to secure investment at any time, with the option to “seamlessly move” between gold and other digital assets.
In addition, new ways to invest in gold could be developed, making it more attractive to trade. Traditional physical bullion and gold-related funds are not yield-producing — gains are realised only when prices rise. According to the State Street and WGC 2023 Gold Perceptions Survey, more than 50% of financial advisers cite that gold’s lack of coupons or dividends hinders its investment potential.
Through digitalisation, investors can earn a passive income from the gold they hold. In such a scenario, institutional investors will gain almost “instantaneous” access to collateralise and lend their gold, while “democratising” access to collateralisation for retail investors.
The paper does note the inherent risk of such a product but argues that as the DeFi space matures, such products could offer an acceptable level of risk-return premium for investors.
Besides MG999, there are already several other use cases for tokenised gold as a yield-bearing investment. One example is the security note linked to the MPMT gold token on MAS-regulated digital asset exchange SDAX.
The Edge Singapore understands that debt securities are issued with MPMT gold tokens as collateral. Offered only to accredited and institutional investors, the notes typically have a tenure of one year, provide quarterly coupon payments and a return of principal at maturity. Each MPMT gold token is backed by one troy ounce of 99.99% pure gold.
Trust issues
Singapore Bullion Market Association CEO Albert Cheng believes that tokenised gold is too complex for ordinary investors. “It [tokenised gold] needs to get the trust of the average investor who looks at it as an alternative way to own gold,” Cheng says in an interview uploaded on YouTube in August 2025. He adds that the crypto world needs to better articulate ownership of the gold or how investors know and trust that they own the underlying gold represented by the gold token.
To digitalise the gold supply chain and the gold market’s infrastructure to support the development of digital gold assets, WGC has launched Gold247, a programme with three key pillars: Gold Bar Integrity (GBI), Wholesale Digital Gold and the Standard Gold Unit.
Briefly, GBI uses distributed ledger technology to create a secure, global database of gold bars, to strengthen confidence that gold bars in its ecosystem have been responsibly mined, refined and traded.
For Wholesale Digital Gold, WGC is developing a “legally robust and technologically neutral” framework for gold ownership and settlement that could enhance how gold is owned, traded, and utilised. This includes creating opportunities for fractional ownership and new use cases for gold payment and collateralisation.
Last, but not least, the Standard Gold Unit refers to the establishment of a global standard of digital gold that uses digital technology to separate the monetary value of gold from the physical asset. “We know digitalisation of the gold industry is critical to ensuring that gold continues to be a timeless and trusted asset now and in the future,” adds WGC CEO David Tait.
Adoption
Daniel Rabetti, an assistant professor in accounting and finance at the National University of Singapore, says that tokenised gold is unlikely to replace physical gold. However, tokenised gold can become more popular for trading. “It trades 24/7, settles instantly, can be divided into fine fractional units, and is accessible worldwide through both centralised and decentralised trading platforms,” he tells The Edge Singapore.
Rabetti, whose research focuses on blockchains and DeFi, says that tokenised gold retains gold’s safe-haven characteristics during periods of market stress. He views tokenised gold as a “new financial layer” on top of physical gold rather than a substitute for it, similar to how gold ETFs were considered when they were introduced. “With rapid adoption and billions in volume, tokenised gold is already attracting significant interest from both retail and institutional traders worldwide,” he adds.
As digital tokens comprise digital payment tokens and digital representations of capital market products, the provision of digital token services in Singapore is regulated under the Payment Services Act 2019, the Securities and Futures Act 2001, or the Financial Advisers Act 2001.
For MG999, it is a tightly regulated product open only to licensed gold retailers for borrowing and to institutional investors for investment, according to Aaron Gwak, Libeara’s CEO and Founder.
“The gold inventory held by Mustafa will be its collateral, and as a licenced gold retailer, Mustafa’s inventory undergoes strict auditing processes to ensure it complies with Singapore’s AML/CFT laws,” Gwak adds.
The fund size is $15 million for now and Libeara is aiming higher. “For lenders, MG999 is a fund that transforms traditional gold exposure from a ‘negative carry’ asset to a productive, yield-generating instrument,” says Gwak.
“Gold-linked token is a specialised financial product that is unique and complex,” says Mustaq Ahmad, founder of the Mustafa Group. “MG999 will enable gold retailers to capitalise on innovation in the digital space and help to better manage working capital needs.” Serangoon Road’s glitter may take on a new dimension.
