Kent Swig launches his own cryptocurrency

Real estate investor and Terra Holdings owner Kent Swig has secured $6 billion in gold reserves to back his new cryptocurrency.

DIGau, his digital token, will be pegged to the market price of the gold, Bloomberg News reported. The gold is guaranteed by liens that Swig and partner Stephen Braverman secured against mining claims in Nevada and Arizona through their company, Dignity Gold.

“Gold was one of the original rock-solid backings of all currencies,” Swig told the publication. “We’re not reinventing the wheel here. What we’re doing is applying the world’s stable backing of a lot of things to a very advanced technology.”

While cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have seen massive swings, pegging the new coin to a physical asset could stabilize it.

Swig’s new coin isn’t the first attempt to combine gold and crypto; other attempts haven’t had much success, according to Bloomberg. But an interest in both has increased in recent years, as investors seek to protect themselves against inflation.

Billionaire Rick Caruso’s real estate firm recently became the largest real estate firm to accept rent in cryptocurrency.

[Bloomberg] — Sasha Jones