One New York-based firm already offering a stablecoin is taking the next step by looking at the feasibility of a gold- backed digital token this year.

Having launched Paxos Standard stablecoin in 2018 Paxos is now keen to offer “any type of asset and put it into a blockchain.” According to the company’s CEO Chad Cascarilla, a new kind of offering could be simple. “How you do it with a gold token is how much gold you have in a vault equals how many gold tokens outstanding,” he argues. This could be up and running by 2019, the Paxos CEO is suggesting.

Although any commodities could be feasibly be put on the blockchain, Cascarilla suggests that “gold is probably the most obvious.” Having become the first virtual currency company to be licensed in New York, his company could be the first to potentially become the forerunner of enabling stock trading on the blockchain if these plans come to fruition.

One hurdle to tying cryptocurrencies to traditional securities remains the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) currently swamped by ETF applications, knocked back by the recent government shut down. Paxos is still awaiting a response to their application to proceed with a gold-backed digital token.

The tokenization of precious metals could revolutionize asset lending given for example the logistical complications dividing gold and its transportation. Cascarilla suggests that tokenization kills two birds with one stone:

“Having it sit in a vault but also having it be on a blockchain kind of bridges those two worlds,” he added.