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Tokenized commodities

Streamex GLDY

Not approved The evidence weighs against it

Review open since 2026-10-01: Open item: streamex-gldy: 2 sources no longer resolve. A draft revision dated 2026-10-01 is under audit. The verdict stands until the review closes.

Verdict
Not approved
The evidence weighs against it
Who can freeze it
Protocol
The OPERATOR role can freeze any address, edit the whitelist and pause the token; the TREASURY role mints and can burn any amount held by a frozen address, which the contract logs as a Confiscation.
Withdrawals
Only verified accredited investors may buy, US or not.
Reviewed
2026-09-23
Researched memo

Summary

Ketju does not approve Streamex GLDY: the holder owns a share of a company that lends its gold out, Streamex holds 91.0% of the tokens, and the redemption terms are unpublished. Each token is a non-voting participating share of Streamex Ltd., a Cayman Islands company that buys gold bullion and lends it out through Monetary Metals for a fee paid in gold. Streamex Corp. (Nasdaq: STEX) holds the company’s single voting share, runs it through its own subsidiary, and consolidates it on its balance sheet. The offering is a Rule 506(c) private placement open only to verified accredited investors. A transfer counts only when the company writes it into its own register. The yield comes from lending the gold to refiners, jewelers and manufacturers. The metal backing a token may therefore be out of the vault and owed by a lessee, and the leasing agent does not guarantee payment. On 2026-06-30 Streamex held 91.0% of about 3,111 GLDY, and eight outside holders and one fund held the rest. The $13 million market value on data sites is mostly Streamex’s own stake. The subscription agreement calls redemption rights limited, and two Streamex multisig wallets can freeze any holder and burn the balance. They have done so eight times. A physically backed gold trust, whose metal stays in the vault, serves a client who wants gold better.

Research

How it works

The subscription documents describe the offering as “non-voting, participating shares digitally represented by tokens” of Streamex Ltd., a Cayman Islands exempted company. Streamex’s 10-Q for the quarter ended 2026-06-30 calls GLDY “non-voting participating equity interests” and explains why Streamex consolidates the company. The token holders have no substantive vote, and “voting control resides with the single voting management share,” which appoints and removes the directors. GLDY ServiceCo, LLC, a Streamex subsidiary, runs the company day to day. The holder owns a share of a company whose assets are gold and gold leases. If the company owes money, its creditors rank ahead of its shareholders. A warehouse receipt such as PAX Gold gives the holder title to bars instead. Each GLDY began as one troy ounce of gold. The company pays the lease income by minting new GLDY to holders each month, so the ounces behind a token move with the company’s results. The Streamex site says the company intends to register with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority as a mutual fund and that, as of its writing, it was not registered.

Custody and yield

On 2026-06-30 Streamex Ltd. carried $15.46 million of gold at cost. The Streamex app names Asahi Depository LLC in Blauvelt, New York as custodian, Zedra Fund Administration (Cayman) as administrator, registrar and transfer agent, EisnerAmper as auditor, and Monetary Metals as leasing agent. The 10-K describes the leases as a “back-to-back” structure: the company leases gold to a series of a Delaware limited liability company managed by Monetary Metals, “which then may commingle the SPV’s gold with gold from other participants and lease it to the ultimate lessee.” The app lists refiners, jewelers and industrial users as lessees and collateral “up to 110%.” The 10-Q says the leasing counterparty “does not guarantee payment” and the company depends on “a small number of underlying lessees.” In the second quarter the company earned $134,000 of lease yield in kind plus a $12,000 revenue share, against a 3.5% target that Streamex calls illustrative. Gold on lease is owed to the company by the lessee and is outside the vault; the 10-K warns that “gold deployed into leases may not be immediately available for redemption or liquidation.”

Size and holdings

On chain the supply was 3,182.56 GLDY on 2026-09-23, worth about $13.6 million at $4,285 a token. The 10-Q shows who holds it: Streamex held about 91.0% on 2026-06-30, and the rest belonged to the Metalayer fund and eight outside holders, three of them Streamex officers. Streamex sold GLDY to Metalayer for about $1 million of USDC in the same quarter that it put $2 million into Metalayer. On 2026-07-01 Streamex lent 1,069 GLDY and $5 million of USDC, interest free and unsecured, to a trading firm to make a market; the 10-Q says Streamex could lose those assets. GLDY trades in a pool on Orca that Streamex says checks its accreditation records, but no Solana GLDY mint appears in Streamex’s documents. A resale is a transfer of restricted securities: the buyer must be accredited, whitelisted, and sign the subscription agreement, and “no Secondary Transfer shall be effective until recorded on the Register maintained by the SPV,” which the SPV may “block, reverse, refuse to recognize, or unwind.”

Who controls it

GLDY runs behind an upgradeable proxy on Base. The contract checks every transfer against a freeze list. While the whitelist is on, as it has been since February 2026, the contract also checks that the recipient is whitelisted. The OPERATOR role can freeze any address, edit the whitelist and pause the token; the TREASURY role mints and can burn any amount held by a frozen address, which the contract logs as a Confiscation. DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE grants roles and upgrades the code. On 2026-09-23 the admin was a Safe needing three of five signers, and TREASURY and OPERATOR were two Safes each needing two of the same three signers, two of whom also sign the admin Safe. Streamex burned 100 GLDY from seven frozen wallets on 2026-02-10 and 5.35 GLDY from another on 2026-08-13. A new mint must pass a reserve check; until March 2026 an admin key typed the reserve figure in, and since then a Chainlink proof-of-reserve feed supplies it, with a fallback the admin switched on.

Eligibility and withdrawals

Only verified accredited investors may buy, US or not. The site says “all investors (including non‑U.S. persons) will be required to satisfy accredited‑investor verification.” The subscription documents name no minimum; a buyer below $200,000 must send documents proving accredited status. Individuals, IRAs, revocable and other trusts, entities and family offices may qualify, and a benefit plan answers a separate questionnaire. The SPV handles redemptions under a private placement memorandum that is not public. The subscription agreement says the subscriber “is aware of the limited provisions for transferability and redemption.” The 10-Q says purchases and redemptions settle in USDC. The SPV may also redeem a holder by force, for example a benefit plan or a holder whose answers prove false.

Comparison

PAX Gold gives the holder title to allocated bars. GLDY gives a share of a company that lends its gold, for a target yield of about 3.5% that depends on a few lessees. In a physically backed gold trust, the metal stays in the vault and authorized participants create and redeem shares daily. Compared with such a trust, GLDY adds lessee credit risk, a sponsor that holds nine tenths of the tokens and controls the board, unpublished redemption terms, and freeze and burn powers that Streamex has already used. Ketju will review GLDY again if Streamex publishes the memorandum and it gives holders a firm redemption right, if outside holders own most of GLDY, or if an independent report shows how much gold is in the vault and how much is on lease.

Sources

Each claim above comes from one of these sources. Where Ketju could not verify a number, the memo states that.

The asset and the chain

This memo covers the protocol. A position also holds an asset and settles on a chain. Whichever of the three holds the most power over the position decides who can freeze it. These tables describe control and do not judge quality.

ChainVerdictFreezeWhat it can do
BaseApproved with limits Mixed control Coinbase, one regulated US company, operates the only sequencer, and admin keys can upgrade bridge contracts within about 7 days.
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