Meld Gold completes MCAU/MCAG phase-out, shifts tokenized metals to GOLD$/SILVER$

2026-08-11

tokenization · gold · silver · xrpl · discovery · web · algorand · updated

A notice pinned to the top of Meld Gold's website now describes a completed event rather than an upcoming one — and it is more consequential than the headline above it, which reads 'The future of digital silver.' The Australian bullion tokenizer's first-generation digital certificates, MCAU for gold and MCAG for silver, stopped trading on BTC Markets at 10:00am AEST on June 24, 2025. Holders had until 4:00pm AEST on June 29, 2026 to withdraw them to a self-hosted wallet; anything still sitting on the exchange after the cutoff was converted to Australian dollars on or around June 30, 2026, at the spot price of gold on the cutoff date plus 1%. Between the delisting and the cutoff, Meld Gold kept honoring exchanges of its certificates for physical gold but sold no new certificates.

Each MCAU crypto-token represented one Meld Gold Certificate, and each certificate was backed 1:1 by a gram of physical gold. The certificates have lived on Algorand since Meld's early-2021 retail launch. The notice, authorized by Meld Gold Pty Ltd (ACN 638 548 231), also warned users to watch for scammers impersonating Meld Gold or BTC Markets during the migration window — a reminder that forced-migration periods are a favorite phishing setup. The transition itself passed quietly: Meld Gold has not published a public accounting of how many holders moved their certificates to self-custody versus being cashed out.

On-chain, the legacy assets tell a partial version of the story. MCAU and MCAG remain registered on Algorand, where Meld's own token page lists them as 'retired' — still backed by the underlying metal and fully redeemable, but being phased out. The original MCAU/MCAG creator address now holds essentially none of either asset. Instead, virtually the entire MCAG supply — 90,071,992,219 of the roughly 90 billion registered units — sits in the address that created the current-generation tokens, a structure consistent with the issuer consolidating legacy metal into its new token program. The largest MCAU balances outside the issuer are measured in tens of grams, and small transfers, including a 3-gram return to the issuer's address, still appeared on-chain as recently as late July 2026.

A Second Generation of Tokens

The current generation is GOLD$ (asset ID 246516580) and SILVER$ (asset ID 246519683). Each token represents one gram of the corresponding metal, which Meld says is stored in secure vaults and can be redeemed for the physical bullion.

Both the retired and the current tokens are Algorand Standard Assets — the network's built-in mechanism for issuing assets directly on the base layer, with balances validated by network consensus like the ALGO token itself. That shared foundation is why the phase-out could happen as a same-chain handover: MCAU and MCAG never left Algorand's ledger, and the new program reuses the same infrastructure and DeFi integrations. An ASA transfer settles in a few seconds with single-block finality — once a block confirming a transfer is produced, the transfer is final, with no probabilistic settlement window — which is what lets a precious-metals token change hands like a native asset rather than a certificate awaiting broker reconciliation.

What the new generation changes is product structure rather than protocol: GOLD$ and SILVER$ carry six decimal places and a supply cap of 100 billion grams, versus five decimals and roughly 90 billion units for the retired assets. Meld's own 2024 governance proposal describes the tokens as delivered for the purpose of connecting the liquidity of the traditional precious-metals market into Algorand DeFi and getting listed on a global centralized exchange. The on-chain parameters define the trust relationship a holder actually has:

Concept	Real-World Implication
Same-chain ASA standard for retired and current tokens	The phase-out required no bridge or protocol migration; retiring the certificate brand was a product decision executed on Algorand's existing token standard
Manager, freeze, and clawback addresses are configured on both new assets	Meld retains administrative control of the kind normally used for compliance, so holders rely on the issuer not to exercise it
GOLD$ supply cap is 100 billion grams, with the creator address holding 99,999,958,824 of them	The cap is a ceiling, not issued metal: every other address combined holds about 41 kilograms, so the practical gold float is small
SILVER$ creator address holds 99,998,003,874 of its 100 billion grams	Roughly 2,000 kilograms sit outside the reserve — silver is the more distributed of the two tokens
Algorand DEX liquidity	Tinyman shows roughly $21,700 of GOLD$ liquidity and $21,400 of SILVER$, with 24-hour volumes around $423 and $212 — thin secondary markets

The asset records for both new tokens point back to meld.gold, tying the on-chain supply to Meld Gold itself.

Taking Delivery of Physical Metal

Redemption runs through bullion partners rather than a fixed-price exchange. Meld's Convert page routes digital-to-physical conversion through Imperial Bullion, Swiss bullion producer MKS PAMP, The Perth Mint, and Meld Gold's own cast bars, and it accepts metal going the other way — physical-to-digital — through the same partners. Metals can be taken as cast bars, minted bars, or legal-tender coins.

The page publishes example fabrication premiums, which are guides and exclude logistics costs. They make the economics of redemption explicit:

Concept	Real-World Implication
Gold 1 kg cast bar at a 1.9% fabrication premium	The cheapest listed way to take delivery, closest to spot price
Gold 1 g minted bar at a 42% premium	Fractional sizes carry heavy fabrication costs that erode small conversions
Silver 100 oz cast bar at a 6% premium	The lowest-cost silver format listed
Silver 1 oz coin at a 25% premium	Legal-tender coins cost more but add collectability and lower counterfeiting risk

Actual quotes are issued through a request form on the page rather than published prices.

The Trust Model Behind 'Live Audit'

Meld's Live Audit page reports 3,867 users, $13,162,756 in total value locked, 1,893,444 asset transactions, and 37,850 transactions in the last 30 days.

The page also names vault locations — Imperial Vaults in Brisbane, MKS PAMP in Geneva, and further facilities in the US, Switzerland, the UAE, and Australia — and its XRP Ledger column reads 'Coming Soon.' What the page does not offer is independent verification of any of it. The figures are Meld's own counters; total value locked is a metric of assets deposited in DeFi protocols, and here it is self-published.

That self-published ledger is the core trust tradeoff of holding a tokenized metal. The issuer's promise — that every GOLD$ and SILVER$ is 1:1 backed by physical bullion in a named vault — can only be checked if someone independent confirms the vaults. Meld has described its own audit system as patent-pending and, as of its late-2024 account, 'currently in manual operation.' No third-party attestation appears anywhere on the site, so a holder's certainty rests on Meld's word for the metal behind the tokens.

A Second Chain: XRP Ledger

Meld Gold has run a parallel expansion on the XRP Ledger since 2024. The company announced a collaboration with Ripple that year, with coverage reporting gold- and silver-backed tokens custodied by MKS Pamp and Imperial Vaults. Ripple's developer publication, RippleXDev, spotlighted Meld Gold in November 2024, and founder Michael Cotton appeared at XRP Ledger Apex 2024. The XRPL side of the business appears in Meld's conversion flow as assets under the tickers GLD and SLV, alongside the Algorand pair.

Cotton framed the choice of XRP Ledger around payments: 'The core use case for things like gold and silver is an alternative to Fiat. If you are looking at doing global payments, having savings, and then making payments with those savings, gold is well poised as an alternative asset for those kinds of transactions.' Meld's home page describes a 'thriving, multi-chain ecosystem' in which its assets are accepted by Pera Wallet, Folks Finance, Algomint, BTC Markets, Fireblocks, Pact, Ledger, and Defly across the Algorand and XRPL ecosystems.

Incentives, Collectibles, and the Team

Meld has repeatedly drawn on Algorand's community funding to seed liquidity. Through 2023 and 2024 it filed a series of Targeted DeFi Rewards plans (GP9 through GP13) with the Algorand community — proposals for distributing ALGO rewards into lending and liquidity pools that hold its tokens. In February 2024 it submitted xGov proposal 167, requesting 250,000 ALGO to list GOLD$ and SILVER$ on a global centralized exchange and develop market-making; the eventual outcome of that proposal is not reflected in the materials reviewed.

The company also ties digital collectibles to its metal. An app at app.meld.gold offers Lunar New Year coin NFTs redeemable for GOLD$ and SILVER$: the 2023 Year of the Rabbit series included 50 gold coins redeemable for 1 GOLD$ each and 150 silver coins for 5 SILVER$ each, and the 2024 Year of the Dragon series included editions such as a 1-ounce gold coin redeemable for 31.1035 GOLD$ and a 1 kg silver coin redeemable for 1,000 SILVER$.

Behind the tokens is a small team led by founder Michael Cotton, a precious-metals veteran who co-founded Australian bullion house Imperial Group, with Dominic Hawton as CTO and AJ Milne — himself the founder of bridge protocol Algomint — as an advisor. The About page carries endorsements from industry figures; Melbourne Mint CEO Peter August is quoted saying that 'Many companies have tried to create their own version of gold-backed tokens, but what Meld is doing is new: they're using blockchain technology to not just emulate but improve the actual gold market.'

The certificate era is closed; the token era has yet to prove its scale. Whether Meld Gold becomes the 'digital superhighway for precious metals' its founder describes depends less on further migrations than on two open questions the site leaves to readers: who verifies the metal, and who actually holds it.

Source

Source: https://meld.gold/