NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwired – Jul 29, 2014) – GBI is proud to announce that it has launched a digital, gold-backed currency via the Ripple protocol. The protocol allows clients the ability to spend their physical gold (XAU) balance online, send it electronically to friends and family, or spend it as a currency for payment anywhere Bitcoin is accepted. This new and unique capability comes from GBI’s just-launched Ripple gateway. All XAU trades are backed with physical gold deposited in six secure vaults around the world. Select market makers have already been issued XAU balances and have commenced trading.

Ripple is an open-source, decentralized payments protocol that enables anything of value to be traded through a global value web. Market makers on Ripple seamlessly exchange different units of value for trading and transactions. For example, when GBI clients pay for goods and services with gold, it can be automatically converted into dollars or another preferred unit of value for delivery to a merchant.

“Ripple changes the dynamics of value, allowing for a real-time market that can instantly trade between gold, currency, mobile minutes, and more,” said Steven Feldman, co-founder and CEO of GBI. “We have been leaders in combining technology and precious metals, and our integration into Ripple allows us to continue our push into digital currencies by enabling investors to now buy digital physical gold.”

GBI is an institutional quality precious metals provider with over $1 billion in completed transactions. The firm provides its services to a broad range of customers including Merrill Lynch.

“Investors can withdraw their XAU balance at any time and GBI will send the corresponding amount of physical gold,” said Savneet Singh, co-founder and head of the Digital Currency initiative at GBI. “GBI allows those who prefer the security of a precious metals-backed currency to now buy digital units of that currency on Ripple with complete confidence in the security of their assets. This continues our movement into the digital currency world and we look forward to sharing future exciting announcements shortly.”

To buy digital physical gold from GBI, click here to get started.

About GBI

GBI is a leading institutional precious metals provider to individual investors and the wealth management industry. GBI’s technology and operations platform allows investors to acquire and manage their physical precious metals assets directly through GBI or through their existing wealth management account relationships. Precious metals are acquired through a competitive institutional dealer network, stored on behalf of investors in protected and insured vaults in New York, Salt Lake City, London, Zurich, Melbourne and Singapore, and audited by one of the big four accounting firms. GBI provides the easiest, safest and most reliable option for precious metals ownership. GBI, own what’s real.