Mike Oswin

The World Gold Council, in collaboration with Linklaters and Hilltop Walk Consulting, recently unveiled a pioneering vision to transform the global gold market through the introduction of “wholesale digital gold”, a transformative concept that will enhance how the precious metal is owned, traded, and utilized.

Gold may be one of the world’s oldest monetary assets, but its market infrastructure is now poised for a digital overhaul. At the heart of this shift lies a bold new legal and operational model known as “pooled gold interests” ( PGIs ), an innovation that aims to reconcile the trust of physical gold with the efficiency and utility of digital markets.

To explore the strategic implications, The Asset spoke with Mike Oswin, global head of market structure and innovation at the World Gold Council.

Oswin, a veteran of financial infrastructure and strategic market reforms, is leading the initiative. Speaking from London, he stresses that the proposed digital model is not just another fintech experiment: “This is not tokenization for tokenization’s sake. We are laying the rails for the next generation of gold market architecture.”

Allocated and unallocated

The challenge? Bringing together the best of both worlds: the security of allocated gold and the flexibility of the unallocated market. “Allocated gold gives you the certainty of physical title, but it’s immobile. Unallocated gold is highly liquid but comes with credit risk. PGIs are designed to bridge that gap,” explains Oswin.

Each PGI is a digital representation of real, fully allocated gold stored in custodian vaults, governed by a new legal structure developed under English law in collaboration with Linklaters.

These PGIs confer full beneficial ownership and are designed to be bankruptcy-remote, a non-negotiable feature for their intended role as collateral in financial transactions.

“We worked through the legal challenges around fractionalization and collective investment schemes,” Oswin says. “We had to find a structure where the physical gold is co-owned by core participants, while PGIs allow for fractional digital transfer without constituting a collective investment scheme.”

Global scale

The initial application of PGI is laser-focused on the wholesale market. With daily OTC gold trading volumes averaging around US$140 billion, and over 20 million ounces cleared each day, this is a high-stakes environment with legacy systems showing their age.

“We’re not here to disrupt Loco London or replace traditional gold settlement,” Oswin clarifies. “This is evolutionary. But over time, we believe PGIs could coexist alongside and complement existing infrastructure, perhaps even enhancing trading and settlement mechanisms by introducing a more mobile and legally robust form of digital gold.”

He points to one key use case: mobilizing gold as collateral. While allocated gold is allowable collateral under uncleared margin rules, and accepted by many exchanges and clearing houses, it's rarely used in practice due to the operational burden of transferring the gold bars between storage locations.

“With PGI, gold could move at the speed of other digital instruments like cash or government bonds. It creates a high-quality, liquid, and mobile asset that’s legally sound and instantly usable.”

Asked whether this legal framework can scale globally, Oswin is confident: “We’re starting under English law for a reason, it’s the basis of the Loco London market. But this isn’t a parochial play. We can foresee the applicability of PGI in jurisdictions including Asia, the US, and Europe.”

Singapore and Hong Kong, with their English-derived legal systems and vibrant gold markets, are natural next steps. “It’s very possible we will see legal alignment and institutional interest in those markets,” he says.

Pilot and beyond

The PGI model is more than a thought experiment. A real-world pilot is scheduled for late 2025, involving the physical movement of gold into a vault, the issuance of PGI, and their use as collateral in live transactions.

“It’s not a simulation,” Oswin insists. “We will physically move gold, create PGI, and test actual transfers in the financial system. This is implementation, not just testing.”

The pilot will also help define the operating rulebook and pave the way for post-pilot scaling in 2026 and 2027. Oswin sees mainstream adoption following shortly thereafter, depending on the pace of market participation and regulatory feedback.

Patient innovation

Critically, Oswin distances the initiative from the tokenization wave dominating parts of the digital asset conversation. “PGIs are not securities, not crypto tokens, and not part of emerging crypto regulations such as the Markets in Crypto-Assets ( MiCA ) regime. They’re designed as a financial market infrastructure upgrade, not a challenger asset class.”

The market, he says, supports this positioning: “We’ve had deep participation from major banks, custodians, and triparty agents. If this were perceived as a threat or a disintermediator, they wouldn’t be at the table.”

Indeed, the goal is not to dismantle existing systems but to create an additional digital pillar, one that enhances optionality and efficiency while retaining the trust and integrity of physical gold.

Change in this space takes time, and Oswin, whose background includes large-scale market infrastructure reforms, is realistic about the timeline: “You need tenacity and patience. But when the market sees value and opportunity, you gain momentum.”

Gold, he points out, is a timeless asset. “We’re not racing against obsolescence. We’re enhancing something that’s already essential to global finance.”