Aussie fintech Trovio secures Environmental Finance award

Trovio a commodities digitisation firm, has today been announced as the winner of Environmental Finance’s ESG Innovation of the Year for its product GoldZero — the first-ever carbon neutral gold exchange-traded fund (ETF). Developed with the world’s largest voluntary carbon credit exchange, Xpansiv CBL Markets, GoldZero aims to empower investors to achieve a net-zero carbon target in their portfolio.

The judges of the Environmental Finance Sustainable Investment Awards were impressed with GoldZero’s innovative approach to modernising the world’s oldest asset class. As one judge said, “Transforming the oldest asset class in the world into a product that meets the modern investor standards is truly innovative and a leading example of the nexus of sustainability, technology, and finance.”

Another commented GoldZero’s “very impressive approach to a traditionally ‘dirty’ asset’, as well as its “joint focus on both institutional and retail, and the full lifecycle approach.”

Set to float on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on August 1st, GoldZero eliminates gold’s carbon emissions via perpetually held retired carbon credits linked to Trovio’s blockchain registry. This enables investors to track the provenance of gold (and its carbon offset) for its entire lifecycle. The result is an intrinsically global ESG-friendly premium gold product unlike any other commodity in the market.

“We’re honoured to receive Environmental Finance’s ESG Innovation of the Year award for GoldZero. The award provides important validation and recognition for the progress we’re making towards our mission of empowering investors to promote better climate decisions,” said Jon Deane, CEO of Trovio.

Only by investing in GoldZero can fund managers be confident that their investments don’t add carbon emissions to their portfolio and continue to achieve and promote a net-zero carbon target.

“Investors can now choose an investment product that meets global ESG standards while retaining the underlying performance of gold as a store of value and inflation hedge,” Deane added.

Initially launched in 2017, Trovio offers both centralised and decentralised  platform solutions for the digitization, tokenization and provenance tracking of assets, including gold and other commodities. Since 2018, The Perth Mint has been digitising gold by leveraging Trovio’s blockchain-powered SaaS solution, TrovioBRIDGE, to deliver gold and silver directly to clients. Trovio was also issuer of The Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) – the world’s first digital gold token on a public blockchain backed by government-guaranteed gold.

Trovio plans to create a myriad of other net-zero carbon emission products, all underpinned by its Global Emissions Offset (GEO) contract.