South African Web3 Firm Fractionalizes Rare ZAR Proof Coins into NFTs

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South African Web3 tech com­pa­ny Momint has frac­tion­al­ized a set of rare gold, sil­ver, and bronze coins from 130 years ago into non-fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs).

This com­plete denom­i­na­tion set of proof coins of Zuid-Afrikaan­sche Repub­liek (ZAR), an inde­pen­dent state in nine­teenth cen­tu­ry South Africa, was mint­ed in 1892 and is cur­rent­ly val­ued at $1.2 million.

The coins are part of the first-ever South African rands and served as the inspi­ra­tion behind the pop­u­lar Kruger­rand gold coins, the country’s first cur­ren­cy, that began mint­ing in 1967, CEO Ahren Posthu­mus said.

Frac­tion­al­iza­tion involves cut­ting an asset into small­er units. In the case of the ZAR set of coins, each non-fun­gi­ble token turns a sin­gle coin into lots of fun­gi­ble cryp­to tokens, allow­ing peo­ple to own equi­ty in a sin­gle NFT.

Asset-backed stability

Posthu­mus explained that NFTs “allow us to bring this asset-backed sta­bil­i­ty” to the world of Web3, the com­ing gen­er­a­tion of the inter­net built on blockchain technology.

“I think non-fun­gi­ble tokens have been need­ing util­i­ty for a while,” Posthu­mus told Be[in]Crypto in an interview.

“This entire mar­ket is shift­ing towards phase two of non-fun­gi­ble tokens, where we see the inter­sec­tion of the real world and this dig­i­tal craze that’s been hap­pen­ing over the last two years. The inter­sec­tion of those two is where we find real val­ue, real util­i­ty, and real dis­rup­tion in industries.”

Momint was behind the $130,000 auc­tion of Nel­son Mandela’s offi­cial war­rant of arrest NFT in April. The start­up, which oper­ates an NFT mar­ket­place, has been active­ly explor­ing ways to cap­i­tal­ize on the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of dig­i­tal col­lectibles since it start­ed oper­a­tions a year ago.

Firm partners with South African coin exchange

In its lat­est ven­ture, Momint part­nered with the South African Gold Coin Exchange, a mar­ket leader in gold bul­lion and numis­mat­ics, and The Scoin Shop, the largest dis­trib­u­tor of gold coins in the south­ern African nation.

The exchange lever­ages the Momint NFT mar­ket­place to frac­tion­al­ize the coins into tokens that can be sold indi­vid­u­al­ly on the platform.

Posthu­mus said the deal would make invest­ing in gold and his­toric assets more acces­si­ble to low-income earn­ers in Africa, and else­where around the world. He claimed the ZAR 1892 proof coins, a total of 10, were “remark­ably well-pre­served due to non-use.”

From this, Momint mint­ed 1,510 NFTs on the Poly­gon blockchain, each cost­ing between $200 to $12,000. Hold­ers will gain part own­er­ship of the actu­al phys­i­cal coin set and will be able to buy and sell the tokens on Momint’s platform.

Tangible ownership

Accord­ing to its web­site, there are three dif­fer­ent lev­els of frac­tion­al own­er­ship of the coins: gold, sil­ver and bronze. Each tier rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent por­tion of equi­ty in the col­lec­tion. The top two NFTs allow hold­ers access to view the coins in per­son. Gold lev­el hold­ers also get half an ounce Kruger­rand coin in their name.

“The core thing here is twofold: acces­si­bil­i­ty, and giv­ing sta­bil­i­ty to an NFT that you own, in terms of price sta­bil­i­ty,” said the CEO. He added:

I mean if you buy a Bored Ape or a JPEG on OpenSea, you know these are just art­works and the only thing giv­ing it val­ue is spec­u­la­tion. How­ev­er, now you’re buy­ing into some­thing where you actu­al­ly have a piece of own­er­ship in a real tan­gi­ble rare min­er­al set, and that is total­ly dif­fer­ent. That changes the game in terms of your own­er­ship and in the val­ue of the NFT.

Proof coins are “spe­cial ear­ly sam­ples of a coin issue, his­tor­i­cal­ly made for check­ing the dies and for archival pur­pos­es, but nowa­days often struck in greater num­bers spe­cial­ly for coin collectors.”

ZAR proof coins are of the highest quality

The coins are made “using a unique and high-qual­i­ty mint­ing process.” Momint’s ZAR proof coins are con­sid­ered to be one of the high­est-grad­ed proof qual­i­ty coins issued by the ZAR pres­i­dent Paul Kruger in 1892.

Momint says the coin set has been audit­ed by NFT Audi­tors and is stored by Safe­Gold, a lead­ing South African audit, cus­tody, and insur­er of gold coins and bullion.

“We ver­i­fied that these assets exist, and then we frac­tion­al­ized them on the blockchain,” Posthu­mus said.

“The rea­son that’s impor­tant is because you can nev­er over sell or over­sub­scribe the num­ber of tokens that you’re sell­ing for this com­plete denom­i­na­tion set. It’s trans­par­ent and it’s clear. There’s ver­i­fi­able scarci­ty. It exists in the blockchain, and it’s tamper-proof.”

Disclaimer

All the infor­ma­tion con­tained on our web­site is pub­lished in good faith and for gen­er­al infor­ma­tion pur­pos­es only. Any action the read­er takes upon the infor­ma­tion found on our web­site is strict­ly at their own risk.

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