Bitcoin gold exchange Vaultoro.com launched its trading platform on February 13th, and users may now instantly exchange their gold for bitcoin and back on a completely independent basis.

The company announced in a press release:

“Gold protects people against the price volatility of bitcoin without them ever having to go back into fiat currencies, which is attractive to a large number of the Bitcoin community.”

Co-founder Joshua Scigala launched the exchange in response to the Mt. Gox collapse, which allegedly hurt him financially and personally.  He desired to build a fully auditable bitcoin exchange in order to further protect the finances and the safety of his customers:

“Transparency and having glass books is the number one priority for Vaultoro… The blockchain has given us the perfect tools to enable total transparency, easily giving creditors absolute proof of solvency.  Sadly the Bitcoin community needed the Mt. Gox fiasco to force a change in mindset… In a post Mt. Gox world, the free market is demanding higher transparency and Vaultoro is an example of the next generation of fully transparent exchanges.”

The gold generated by the exchange is vaulted in Swiss banks, which are operated by Pro Aurum, a leading physical precious metal dealer, and accountancy network BDO International is slated to perform a company audit every six months to ensure that the company is making any and all transactions easy, safe and quick.

Vaultoro also has three wallet types – a hot wallet (used for daily trades and hosted online), a warm wallet (capable of holding more funds than the hot wallet) and a multi-signature cold wallet (which holds the most funds).

The company further explained:

“The technology of bitcoin is moving far too fast for government regulators to keep up with but the free market is demanding better answers and is effectively regulating itself.  If exchanges don’t produce what the market wants then they don’t get customers… We at Vaultoro.com take full advantage of the public bitcoin blockchain to constantly prove full reserves while the gold holdings are insured and audited every six months by one of the largest auditing firms in the world, on top of that we let the users publicly audit the gold and bitcoin holdings, if our records are wrong someone will kick and scream about it.”

Image Courtesy of Google Images