How I LOST 33% on my “digital gold” investment
What you need to know about Aurus.io and the gold-backed crypto space
A few years back I got very excited, as a libertarian-leaning dude, about gold-backed cryptocurrency and I purchased several digital tokens of Aurus Gold (now TXAU/TGold) from Aurus.io, which appeared to be one of the few companies in the space that wasn’t a blatant scam.
I would NOT purchase “digital gold” again or anything from Aurus as it was a MAJOR pain to liquidate my tokens and there is little demand for them on exchanges.
I’m not a dogmatic hodler, I buy crypto because I’d like to one day liquidate and spend it. And Aurus is not really for that.
When I finally did get my tokens onto the exchange, I discovered that there was not enough demand for TXAU/TGold for me to get a fair price. The gold price was $60/ounce but I could only get $40 (less after the exchange and transfer fees) for my tokens. There’s just a single trading pair TXAU-USD on the exchange on Polygon there’s just a single swap pairing with USDC but there’s no demand there either.
I always complain privately before complaining publicly and I did try to reach out to Aurus via email and Telegram asking for an explanation as to why their token isn’t actually worth a gram of gold. Instead of responding they ignored me and banned me from their Telegram channel. That’s an atrocious way to treat a customer!
Even accounting for the inflation of the last few years, I lost money on my Aurus Gold investment. In the future, I’m just going to buy the real stuff that I can hold in my hand, “digital gold” is a pipe dream!
The digital gold space is a den of vipers
A younger, more naive me was once very excited about the prospect of gold-backed digital currency and I went about creating a geodirectory of vendors that could accept it. But then I investigated further all the digital gold and gold-backed cryptocurrency projects I could find, and almost all turned out to be shams and scams.
The most popular “digital gold” company GoldMoney deleted my gold one day and Aurus.io’s (which provided the best evidence of physical reserves) tokens didn’t hold their value. So I’m shutting down MarketplaceGOLD.com for the time being as the space is a den of vipers (or van of diapers as my Bulgarian wife says!)
I’ve worked in four industries in my entrepreneurial career; the Biohacking/anti-aging space, web development, crypto, and the nightlife/entertainment industry in Denver. In the past 12 years, the level of integrity of the businesspeople I’ve dealt with in the Biohacking biz has impressed me; the vast majority of the people in the space genuinely care deeply about delivering great products and services that enrich their customers’ lives. The web development space is similar. And the crypto space makes the people in the nightlife business look like a bunch of saints!
I need to do some thinking about how I can dabble (with integrity!) in the crypto space going forward and what to do with my geodirectory of over 1000 crypto-friendly merchants. Suggestions?
