Physical commodity digitisation firm InfiniGold has pulled former JP Morgan managing director and head of Asia Pacific commodities trading Jon Deane as its new chief executive.
Mr Deane was most recently chief executive at asset manager TCM Capital for a year and a half, focusing on distributed ledger technologies.
InfiniGold said during his last roles, Mr Deane recognised the rapid impact that technology would have on the commodities market, from its application within the commodity supply chain, poof of provenance and on a transactional basis.
The organisation in October teamed up with Perth Mint to launch a gold token cryptocurrency, the Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT), backed 1:1 by GoldPass certificates issued by the mint.
The token is digitsed gold, offering users the ability to acquire and have entitlement over Western Australian government-guaranteed gold stored at the mint.
InfiniGold reported PMGT is the only token globally on a public blockchain backed by a government-guaranteed asset.
Mr Deane commented he was excited to be joining InfiniGold at a formative point in its development.
“InfiniGold has already built an institutional-grade gold product, something that I believe is going to compete with the CME futures market, the global gold ETF markets as well as the interbank gold market,” he said.
“The firm is well positioned to widen its product offering across the commodity spectrum.
“The current geopolitical landscape and associated volatility, are creating a very interesting period for the gold industry. InfiniGold is widening the accessibility of this asset class at a time when I anticipate more and more investors wanting to add gold positions to their portfolios, while also reducing the systematic risk created via synthetic products.”
Prior to the role at TCM, Mr Deane had been with JP Morgan for nine years, having also held the role of global head of bulk commodities trading, global head of agricultural commodities trading and global head, vice-president of agricultural derivatives trading.
Previously, he had been an associate director, commodities trading at UBS and commodities trader at CBA.
