Britain's Royal Mint and leading U.S.-based derivatives exchange CME Group have teamed up to create a blockchain-based digital platform for dealing in gold in a drive to cut the costs involved in trading the precious metal.

The Royal Mint will put gold bars into its on-site secure vault, which will then be digitised to create RMGs whose ownership will be recorded on the blockchain. Traders will then be able to trade in and out of RMGs between themselves.

The platform will operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Unlike the traditional model for investing in gold, with management fees and storage charges, RMGs will offer ownership of the underlying gold with the option for conversion to physical gold by the Royal Mint at zero storage cost.