Streamex: Tokenized Gold That Pays Holders a Yield

Streamex is a Nasdaq-listed company that tokenizes commodities. Henry McPhie, its co-founder and CEO, joined Julian Stafford of Surgence Labs to talk about GLDY, a tokenized gold product that pays holders a yield. Henry has a mining engineering degree and a crypto background that began with NFTs in 2019 and 2020. He and his co-founder started the company about three and a half years ago to bring innovation to mining and commodities, an industry that rarely sees it.

The core pitch is that holding gold normally costs money. A gold ETF charges roughly 30 to 40 basis points a year. Physical gold carries a spread, vaulting and insurance. Both slowly reduce the ounces you own. GLDY instead pays about 3.5% a year in additional gold, distributed monthly, so ounces grow. The yield does not come from staking or DeFi. It comes from leasing the gold, through exclusive partner Monetary Metals, to manufacturers, jewelers and refiners who use it as working capital. Henry says leases are over collateralized at 110% and insured by Allianz and Lloyd's of London. The token is backed one to one by physical gold. Lending and staking may be added later as an optional extra layer.

A large part of the conversation is about trust infrastructure, which Henry says took the longest to build. Custody sits with Coinbase Prime, Anchorage and tZERO, with Fireblocks supported. EisnerAmper provides monthly attestations and quarterly audits, and Chainlink publishes proof of reserves on chain. The team includes a CFO who was global controller at Coinbase. Henry notes the infrastructure was built to launch more assets, not only gold.

On access, GLDY is limited for now to accredited investors with a $25,000 minimum under a Reg D issuance, and the team is working with regulators on broader access. Streamex disclosed more than $100 million in indications of interest before launch. Henry explains why that money did not arrive on day one: institutions need KYC and legal review, and an ETF can take 90 to 120 days to update its prospectus. Streamex also launched Aurum, a free gold data platform covering spot price, ETF holdings, central bank reserves and regional premiums, with a calculator that compares GLDY to an ETF and physical gold. Next on the roadmap are a tokenized silver asset with no minimum, then royalties and streams, copper, and oil and gas.