GoldZip gold token (XGZ)

Research, firm shelf, model-client eligibility, and advisor selection are recorded separately. The scheduled date is the outside bound; new evidence can reopen the file sooner.

XGZ is an Ethereum token meant to track one gram of gold. GoldZip Digital Pte Ltd, a Singapore company owned by the Hong Kong Gold Exchange group, issues it, and redeems 1,000 tokens for a 1 kg bar collected at Brink’s in Singapore. About 39,017 XGZ were outstanding on 2026-09-23, roughly 39 kg of gold or $5.3 million. The name of an old exchange stands behind the token, but the terms give the holder almost nothing. They say no holder has “a proprietary interest in any of the Good Delivery Bar(s) held by the Administrator,” so the holder owns no gold and is an unsecured creditor with a right to redeem on GoldZip’s terms. If GoldZip winds down, the tokens become “perfunctory and without legal effect” and every claim is extinguished. Redemption takes a whole kilogram, about $135,000, a signed waiver of all claims, and a trip to Singapore. On chain, the owner contract can freeze any address and then burn its balance, and can raise the transfer fee from 0.01% to as much as 100%. GoldZip publishes no attestation of the bars. The assessment is adverse.

Research triggers: events that reopen the assessment or shelf decision
• GoldZip amends its terms to give holders a proprietary interest in allocated bars that survives its winding down
• An independent firm publishes an attestation or bar list covering the gold behind XGZ
• The owner contract caps the transfer fee well below 100% or removes forceBurn, or the implementation changes
• GoldZip freezes or force-burns an address, or publishes a suspension or wind-down notice
• Redemption opens below one kilogram or at a site outside Singapore

The research file

What the holder owns

GoldZip’s documents say each token is “backed by 99.99% physical fine Gold stored in HKGX recognised gold vaults” and that holders “shall be entitled to redeem GoldZip Eligible Gold Bars.” The Terms and Conditions decide what that means. Clause 4 says no person, by holding tokens or otherwise, has a proprietary interest in the bars GoldZip or its associates hold, or any right to a payment reflecting their value, and that title to a bar passes only when the holder collects it. Clause 6 says the token is not a security, a debt, or a derivative. What is left is a contractual right to exchange tokens for bars, owed by a Singapore private company, on rules GoldZip may amend at its sole discretion.

That matters most in failure. Clause 5 lets GoldZip suspend or wind down “by providing Notice(s),” and once the wind-down is complete every holder’s claims are “extinguished in full and without recourse” and the tokens carry neither right nor claim. A holder of allocated metal would still own the bars if the issuer failed. An XGZ holder would stand in line with GoldZip’s other creditors, if the terms left any claim at all.

How redemption works

The Rules set the process. An onboarded user who has passed KYC opens a ticket in the portal naming the bars, the collection site, and any agent. GoldZip replies with the number of tokens to deposit, the exchange rate plus a non-refundable redemption fee. Within 72 hours the user must deposit the tokens, pick a collection date, and sign an acknowledgement waiving “any and all existing and prospective claims” in respect of the redemption. The only listed collection site is Brink’s Singapore on Kaki Bukit Road, weekdays 9 am to 5 pm by appointment. A missed date costs a late fee; two misses within 30 days void the redemption and a failed-collection fee is kept from the deposit. The minimum is one bar, 1,000 XGZ. Everyone below that sells on MEXC or in the Uniswap pools GoldZip lists, where HKGX member traders make markets.

Who controls the contract

XGZ is a UUPS proxy at 0x69af64f4…7161 on Ethereum; the implementation’s source is an exact match on Sourcify. Its access control is unusual: `hasRole` returns true for the owner for every role, so the owner contract 0xd173e691…0778 can mint, freeze, burn, set fees, pause, and upgrade. `freezeAccount` stops an address, and `forceBurn` then burns a frozen address’s balance. The transfer fee, 0.01% today, can be set up to MAX_FEE_RATE of 10,000 on a 10,000 base, that is, 100% of every transfer, paid to a fee address the owner chooses. The owner is a contract wallet that reports three signers; the Ketju reader did not read its threshold. The reader records freeze, pause, clawback (`forceBurn`), and upgrade.

The terms match the code. Clause 8 lets GoldZip, on deciding that a user is a Prohibited User, “take any action necessary” so that the user’s tokens “are rendered ineffectual,” with no claim for damages.

Who may hold it, and what is published

The only excluded persons are citizens and residents of Hong Kong. Minting requires KYB, so only companies buy from GoldZip; others buy on exchanges. GoldZip says reserves are covered by “third-party audits or attestations,” but its site, documents, and transparency page as read on 2026-09-23 contain no attestation report, auditor name, or bar list; the site offers a wallet lookup that shows an allocation GoldZip computes itself. The litepaper is dated November 2024.

Comparison and decision

Against PAX Gold, the gap is the claim itself: Paxos’s terms make PAXG a warehouse receipt for allocated bars held by an OCC-supervised trust bank and attested monthly; GoldZip’s make XGZ a revocable redemption promise with no property right and no attestation. Against a physically backed gold ETF, XGZ adds issuer credit risk, a one-kilogram redemption floor, a keyholder who can erase balances, and a fee lever with no cap below 100%. The assessment reopens if GoldZip grants holders a property interest in allocated bars, publishes an independent attestation, or caps the fee and removes forceBurn.

Sources

The claims above trace to these. Where a number could not be independently verified, the thesis says so.

• GoldZip: Terms and Conditions (site script that renders goldzip.info/terms-conditions) · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: no proprietary interest, title on collection, wind-down extinguishes claims, not a security or debt, Hong Kong excluded, Prohibited User tokens rendered ineffectual
• GoldZip: Rules relating to GoldZip tokens (site script that renders goldzip.info/goldzip-rules) · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: 72-hour deposit and waiver, one-bar minimum, Brink’s Singapore collection, late and failed collection fees
• GoldZip Docs (GitBook, full text) · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: GoldZip Digital Pte. Ltd., HKGX group, 1 gram per token, 0.01% transfer fee, 1,000 XGZ per bar, KYB to mint, periodic attestation promised
• GoldZip: goldzip.info home page · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: contract link, allocation lookup
• XGZ implementation on Ethereum (Sourcify exact match) · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: owner holds every role, freezeAccount and forceBurn, MAX_FEE_RATE 10,000 of 10,000, UUPS upgrade

Inherited controls

The research above describes the protocol layer. Every position also inherits the asset it holds and the chain it settles on. The most administered layer sets the position’s effective control grade; that is a control description, not a quality or suitability score.