You can trade gold from your desk without having any idea of how it is extracted. It’s similar to how you can eat meat without knowing where it comes from or how it was processed. When you do eventually find out, you might be tempted to become a vegan. Or you might try to change how things are done.
My Gold trading experience has led me to different extraction locations of this fascinating metal. The billion-dollar operations of big international corporations were interesting to watch; the misery of the small independent miners was heartbreaking to witness.
Worldwide, there are 20 million people engaged in Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (ASGM), compared to the 2 million working in industrial mining. But they take out only 20% of the 3,000 tons produced annually. Moreover, most of these ASGM miners live in inhumane, toxic conditions. They labor under the same level of freedom that medieval serfs once experienced in the European feudal system while using their workforce to barely eke out a living for themselves and their families. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.
Because of steady demand and relatively easy access to international markets, gold represents an excellent method of transferring wealth to rural communities. Even in remote areas, small-scale producers can get 90% or more of the quoted international prices. This is a much higher return than other products, such as coffee and bananas, where local producers get 30% or less of the final market price. But ASGM needs to be brought into the formal economy to maximize benefits and enable improvements. Minimizing the environmental and social consequences in artisanal Gold mining requires innovation, broad collaboration, and, most of all, access to capital.
Modern-era capitalism needed credit to flourish. The same applies to ASGM today: without access to capital, gold miners cannot invest in mechanization, pay for claims and titles, hire workers, or avoid using harmful chemicals.
Using its native cryptocurrency — G1X- the Fintech company GoldFinX unshackles the Gold production by giving access to credit, thus creating an immediate and powerful domino effect for wealth creation, social impact, and environmental preservation.
Capitalism at its best!
