KETJU Research

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tokenized-commodity

Streamex GLDY

Adverse research finding
Research assessment
adverse
Firm shelf
excluded by policy
Model-client eligibility
not assessed
Selection
not considered
Action and amount
Not set by research
Reviewed
2026-09-23 · v1
Next review
2026-12-23
Research basis
Individual research
Chains
Base · hybrid
Symbols
GLDY
Eligibility file
What the holder owns and who may hold it

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.

GLDY is sold as gold that pays a yield, but the holder does not own gold. 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, and a transfer counts only when the company writes it into its own register. The adverse assessment rests on three facts. First, the yield comes from lending the gold to refiners, jewelers and manufacturers, so the metal backing a token may be out of the vault and owed by a lessee, and the holder carries that credit risk through a leasing agent that does not guarantee payment. Second, the program is small and held mostly by its sponsor: on 2026-06-30 Streamex held 91.0% of about 3,111 GLDY, and only eight outside holders and one fund held the rest, so the $13 million market value on data sites is mostly Streamex’s own stake. Third, the redemption terms sit in a private placement memorandum Streamex does not publish, the subscription agreement calls redemption rights limited, and two Streamex multisig wallets can freeze any holder and burn the balance, which they have done eight times. A client who wants gold is better served by a physically backed gold trust whose metal stays in the vault.

The research file

What the holder owns

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, “voting control resides with the single voting management share,” which appoints and removes the directors, and day-to-day authority sits with GLDY ServiceCo, LLC, a Streamex subsidiary. 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, and the lease income is paid 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.

Where the gold is and how the yield works

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 gold the company is owed, not gold in the vault; the 10-K warns that “gold deployed into leases may not be immediately available for redemption or liquidation.”

Who holds GLDY and how it trades

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 the token

GLDY runs behind an upgradeable proxy on Base. Every transfer checks a freeze list and, while the whitelist is on (it has been since February 2026), 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.

Who may buy, hold and redeem

Only verified accredited investors, 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. Redemption runs through the SPV 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 and decision

Against PAX Gold, GLDY swaps title to allocated bars for a share of a company that lends its gold, in exchange for a target yield of about 3.5% that depends on a few lessees. Against a physically backed gold trust, whose metal stays in the vault and whose shares are created and redeemed daily by authorized participants, GLDY adds lessee credit risk, a sponsor that holds nine tenths of the program and controls its board, unpublished redemption terms, and freeze and burn powers already used. The assessment reopens 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

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

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.

ChainVerdictGradeControl constraint
BaseFavorable with conditions hybrid Coinbase — one regulated US company — operates the only sequencer, and admin keys can upgrade bridge contracts within ~7 days.
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