Digix makes it possible to buy gold in an efficient manner via cryptocurrency by providing investors with a tokenized version of gold so you don’t have to physically own or store it. Digix has two cryptocurrencies, Digix Gold (DGX) and DigixDAO (DGD), each of which serves a key role in the structure. The company proudly gets 99.99 percent of its gold from LBMA-approved refiners, with zero percent from fractional reserves, delivering confidence. With Digix, investors can take advantage of the stability and value of gold as well as the ease of cryptocurrency. Digix essentially tokenizes gold within Ethereum. It takes advantage of the Distributed Ledger’s immutability, auditability, and transparency, applying all these benefits to the precious physical asset of gold. Additionally, Digix has developed multiple technologies, such as the DGX tokens and introduced a new Proof of Asset protocol (POA). A key feature of Digix is its physical gold bullion. By investing, users buy bullion from the LBMA refineries, including the Assay Certificates from refiners like Nadir Bullion, PAMP Suisse, Valcambi, and others. For security, Digix includes third-party auditing from Bureau Veritas. Every quarter, it audits each gold asset within the safehouse vaults. This auditor has been in business since 1828 and is a world leader in certification, inspection, and testing services. With such a long track record, investors should be able to trust Bureau Veritas for their auditing services. Finally, Digix involves recast, which means customers can take their DGX delivery at the partnering custodial vault. Digix incorporated in Singapore in December 2014 and the DGD crowdsale took place on March 30th, 2016. It was the first ever crowdsale and major Distributed Autonomous Organization hosted on the Ethereum network. The sale intended to run for 30 days but met its 5.5 million dollars hard cap in just 12 hours, selling 1.7 million DGD tokens and reserving 300,000 for the Digix team. Pledges who sent over 15,000 USD worth of Ether received a special badge which will allow them to submit proposals to the DigixDAO. For better or worse, when you see the word DAO, you might think of hacking. In July 2017, over 4000 DGD were indeed stolen due to a vulnerability in the crowdsale smart contract. The bug was eventually fixed and the tokens reimbursed to the 35 affected addresses. In January 2018, the vast majority of the cryptocurrency market crashed. DGD was the only coin in the top 100 to rise in value in that time. Perhaps this is an early indicator that people will seek gold as a safe haven during times of market uncertainty. The ICO price of DGD was about 3 dollars, but in 2018, DGD reached an all-time high of over 400 dollars. When Digix finally delivers the DGX tokens and the rewards to DGD participants start rolling in, we might see an even higher demand for DigixDAO. When DGX goes live, it will be available for purchase with Ether on the Digix marketplace.
Dropil offers a full investing suite including financial planning, retirement savings, and of course trading. Their primary target market is inexperienced investors who are looking for an easy way to enter into the cryptocurrency markets, but they also have something to offer the more experienced investor, cryptocurrency and otherwise. And they claim to be able to set-up investment planning for anyone, regardless of their risk tolerance or background. Of course the main selling point of Dropil is the automation of the cryptocurrency trading process. The platform requires little input from investors and claims it will deliver high profit margins and minimal risk of losses. A second part of the Dropil platform is the Arthur bot. This bot is the risk management bot, which manages investor portfolios and also provides arbitrage analysis. While it is less complex than Dex, it is still important as it will monitor up to 13 different exchanges and 10 different coins to find arbitrage opportunities for you. What is most important to note is that this can all be done without the use of an API as well as no user accounts needed. Future plans include expanding this functionality. The final aspect of the Dropil ecosystem is the DROP token, which is an ERC-20 token that was created to help ensure privacy, while also powering the internal economy of Dropil. The team chose to use the ERC20 protocol to help foster compatibility and quick exchange executions to benefit the entire community. The DROP token has a total supply of 30 billion coins, which was determined to be an optimal amount for asset management by the developers. It was also chosen with the optimal user base in mind, as well as the need for coins to be traded and achieve widespread adoption. The need to use the DROP token to access the feature of Dropil should ensure a good implementation and demand for the token. Dropil looks like an interesting project that is tackling the complexity of investing in cryptocurrencies. The idea of automated trading, investing and arbitrage is a compelling one, but it does sound familiar. Stocks, commodities and forex all have these types of automated systems, or robots, that promise guaranteed returns. I have yet to come across one that is reliable in the long term. Perhaps the artificial intelligence algorithm is advanced enough to change that. Perhaps cryptocurrency market movements are easier to analyze and predict.