Dubai holds the distinction of being the financial capital of the Islamic world. Now, a firm based out of the Emirate has decided to redefine the digital “gold standard” with OneGram, while factoring in the 1.6 billion followers of the Islamic faith. The gold-backed cryptocurrency has announced its ICO at the recently concluded Consensus 2017.
OneGram calls itself the world’s first Sharia-compliant cryptocurrency whose value is backed by actual gold reserves. Hailed as a Bitcoin alternative for the Islamic world, the ICO was announced to coincide with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. The OneGram platform is aiming to raise a total of $500 million against 12 million OneGram tokens (OGC).
In the recent press release, the CEO of OneGram, Ibrahim Mohammed is quoted saying,
“We are very pleased with early support for the OGC token crowdsale from the cryptocurrency and Islamic finance communities. More than 1,000 people have registered for GoldGuard accounts to participate, and the number is growing each day as we prepare to launch our crowdsale in alignment with Ramadan.”
The ICO will go on for 120 days, and the purchase of OGC tokens during the crowdsale will also include a 10% fee which will be utilized by the platform for business development, marketing costs, operational costs, and salaries. In the release, the company also states that each OGC will have a 1% transaction fee associated with it, of which 70% will be reinvested to buy more gold reserves.
Those buying OGC tokens will have to create an account on GoldGuard and purchase gold at live spot rates. The platform has announced that a portion of the proceeds from collected purchase fees will be used for charity donations and PoS mining rewards.
This is not the first time someone has created a gold-backed cryptocurrency. There are various initiatives which revolve around the same core concept. However, unlike the rest, OneGram will have a much greater appeal to devout Muslims who prefer to follow the Islamic laws. With a huge target population, OGC has a huge potential in front of it, which could be realized in due time.
Ref: Media Release| Image: NewsBTC
