Ever since Amaterasu was lured out of the cave by the promise of Kin, Japan, like all of the world’s nations, has had an enduring cultural fascination with gold. The world’s oldest currency, as valuable five millennia ago as it is today, gold is the medium of exchange that has defined our human civilization.

Durable, malleable, scarce, and shiny. Warlords have conquered entire kingdoms in arguments over it, adventurers have sailed every sea on the promise of it, and everyone in world history accepts it. Japan is no different. And with Kinka’s tokenized gold, a new chapter in the history of Japanese gold is about to be written.

The Mines of the Shogun

First mined in 749 AD, the gold mines of Japan have defined whole eras of Japanese history. That first mine financed the construction of the famous large Buddha in Todaiji temple. Arguably Japan’s most famous gold mine was the Sado Island gold mine, which heavily funded the Tokugawa Shogunate throughout the entire Edo period, a period seen as an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity, and out which much of Japan’s cultural history has sprung.

Portuguese and Dutch traders making the long voyage to the Pacific hoping they would be lucky enough to break through Japan’s hard-isolationist foreign policy in the hope of Japanese gold, which fetched far higher price in European markets than others, famed as it was for its purity and provenance, a recognisable cultural whisper from a far eastern land they barely knew. This is still true today, with Edo-period coins hugely sought after by gold collectors.

Japan’s Central Currency

Like in many areas around the world, Japanese society functioned through the use of gold coins. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who emerged from the Sengoku Jidai victorious and as undisputed ruler of Japan, was the first to formalise and standardise their use in the Keicho Era, taking it from beyond an asset to the currency of the nation state. Before then, of course, gold was used by Daimyos to pay their men, and Emperors to furnish their courts, but with the Tokugawa period, the Shogun’s gold became Japan’s only legitimate currency.

It stayed this way till the Meiji Restoration and the New Currency Act of 1871, where Yen became the official currency of the state. However, Japan quickly adopted the gold standard in order to participate in international trade. Gold, then as now, is a powerful, enduring instrument of global finance.

Although the mine stopped after 400 years, even today, the Hishikari Mine in Kagoshuma continues the tradition of Japanese gold ore recognized as of the highest grade and ultra premium, even if Japan is certainly not one of the world’s largest gold producers today. Japan is not a major exporter of gold. Its purity and scarcity adds further to its historical allure, and its value.

Kinka Gold’s Place in History

And now, in the Information Age, Japanese gold is again set to be renewed, enough to pique even Amaraterasu’s interest, with Kinka Gold, tokenized gold that’s 100% backed by pure, premium Japanese gold. Kinka Gold is issued by a subsidiary of UNBANKED, INC., a Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed company with over 40 years of experience in gold trading, and all of its underlying gold bars meet LBMA Good Delivery standards.

Additionally, under Japanese law, the gold bullion that backs Kinka Gold is protected from bankruptcy by the issuer and is safely stored in a warehouse. In short, Kinka Gold is the most premium, reliable, and highly regulated gold-backed crypto token on the market.

The hope is that it will provide a powerful stablecoin alternative, particularly for the Japanese and similar market, where fiat-backed tokens pegged to national currencies are not available to crypto traders.

More importantly even if a fiat-backed currency exists – who wants to hold that? Fiat currencies have continued to weaken in value. By issuing tokenized gold, retailer investors and those looking to secure their portfolio and hedge against inflation can safely hold $XNK, as its price is pegged directly to the price of the gold which backs it. It can function as a new imagining of an Edo era coin. The safe and reliable gold of the Shogun for a new generation.

RWAs and Global Crypto Adoption

Kinka Gold’s launch is also timed well with global history itself, just as widespread excitement over RWAs build. Traditional financial institutions are being increasingly persuaded by the benefit of using blockchain as a medium for global financial exchange. It’s faster, it’s more divisible, it’s more efficient, it’s more secure, and best of all it’s unimpeachable. Everyone can trust the ledger.

One benefit of RWAs is the ability to divide far larger, illiquid assets into smaller, more liquid ones. It creates opportunities for ownership and exchange on both the macro and the micro scale. In gold’s case, on the macro scale, gold exporting countries, hedge funds, clearing houses, trading desks, can all easily use gold as an intermediary currency when doing large-scale international trade, as well as create more sophisticated financial products that can be atomised, repackaged, and distributed far more simply.

On the micro scale, even pocket retail investors can gain access to small amounts of gold, without having to endure the usual maintenance, storage fees, transfer fees, and mark up that you currently get with standard gold retailers. Even more exciting is its ability to confer reliable banking and store of wealth facilities to the otherwise unbanked, reverting communities back to exchanging gold when their fiat currencies are struggling or their access to banking is limited.

Next of Kin

Tokenized gold is only going to grow in importance. Gold is entering the next of its many eras in human history, and Japanese gold, whose own history is so culturally rich, is no different. Just as Portuguese and Dutch traders braved the seas and the krakens for the hope of premium Japanese gold, so crypto traders in Japan and around the world will have the chance to hold Japanese Kin, or Kinka. Japanese gold enters a new era, one that’s just as bright as the light of Amaterasu.