China is the largest gold consumer. In 2017,Chinas actual gold consumption is 1089 tons, an increase of 9.41% compared with 2016.
datastatisticsdataAccording to statistics, the current gold repurchase volume is about 30% of the total gold retail sales, and this proportion is expected to expand to more than 50% by 2020, and the market size can reach 2 trillion yuan.
However, judging from the current situation, the domestic gold repurchase business still has problems such as poor transactions and low transparency, which makes consumers easy to buy gold and difficult to sell gold, and the idle rate of gold is relatively high.
In this regard, founded in 2014 and positioned as gold finance + e-commerceMaijin.com app has launched digital gold business. The backend of this business is a DApp based on Ethereum. Its main function is to track the origin of the gold handled by Maijin.com, and at the same time issue tokens of equal value to users who buy and sell gold, so that users can conveniently consume on the platform , so as to attract new, promote and transform the golden aftermarket。
introduceintroduce, Maijin.com’s income mainly comes from two aspects:
One is the profit from the sale of physical gold on the platform (only online). In addition to direct sales on the platform, Maijin.com also reaches consumers through third-party online channels, such as UnionPay merchants and Color Life, a property covering 3,000+ communities.
The second is the commission earned by the platform from selling third-party financial products. These products include interest-earning deposits, fixed investment in gold, mortgage lending, etc.
The newly added digital gold business of Maijin.com has two main functions.
The first is to issue anchor tokens for ex-factory gold products (only circulated on Buy Gold Online), and use asymmetric encryption technology to generate public/private key pairs to achieve full traceability of products.The private key will be handed over to the consumer who purchases the product for safekeeping (at the same time he obtains the token), and the public key will be used as the identity mark on the chain of the product, and its circulation process will be recorded by various circulation links.
But these bookkeeping nodes are all designated partners of Maijin.com, so how to ensure their honest bookkeeping?
Cheng Peng said that when buying and recycling gold products, Maijin.com will entrust institutions with gold inspection qualifications to identify the products, that is, fake products will be detected and traced. Because there are very few participants in the whole process, it is easier to trace, and these manufacturers have a good reputation in the industry, so there is no need to take the risk of damaging the brand to fake.
If the use of blockchain traceability is just icing on the cake for user confidence in consumption, then the real imagination of digital gold may lie in the second function: to tokenize more peoples idle gold, and to encourage users to generate follow-up transactions, so that gold Bring service space to the platform in higher liquidity.
In terms of implementation, after opening the digital gold business, Maijin.com will allow users to provide anchor tokens when exchanging old gold for new gold, thereby uplinking the gold that was originally outside the Maijinwang network. But can recycling users idle gold and issuing tokens stimulate subsequent transactions?
In this regard, Cheng Peng compared the tokenization of gold to mobile payment - both of which brought convenience to transactions, and eventually made mobile payment popular among thousands of families. The convenience of token consumption is reflected in the fact that physical gold can be freely cut and traded after being given a unique currency symbol corresponding to it. The team expects that 20-25% of platform users will start spending with tokens in the first year.
However, if the user keeps the new gold by himself, the gold and its anchor tokens are difficult to trade, which means little to the platform.Therefore, to facilitate circulationBuygold.com minimizes the cost of selling gold for users, For example, it is stipulated that the minimum handling fee for selling gold starts at 2 yuan per gram (the market price is 5-10 yuan per gram).
From past experience, lowering prices under the same conditions is an effective way to acquire customers. But can such a discount be long-lasting, and will it start a price war with other channels?
Cheng Peng said that it is difficult for ordinary channels to provide this kind of promotion for a long time, because they rely on the recovery of service fees to make profits, while Buying Gold Network comes from the circulation income of idle gold after it is chained, so it can implement a low-price strategy at the traffic entrance for a long time .
For platform users, it still takes a certain amount of time to develop user consumption habits; for potential users (converted by selling gold), Maijin.com still needs to cultivate market awareness. So, how does it reach these target audiences?
Cheng Peng said that Maijin.com intends to cut into offline channels. One is to cooperate with jewelry stores that have recycling qualifications among UnionPay merchants;
It is reported that Maijin.com’s digital gold business is expected to be officially launched in August. The team is currently seeking A2 round of equity financing, which will be used for DApp product development, new business promotion and offline channel construction.
