2018 is going to be a pivotal year for cryptocurrency and blockchain.

How so?

Well, one of the biggest developments – which we're already starting to see, by the way – is that many of those same governments who were against crypto will start adopting it and integrating it into their infrastructure.

Here's an example of that:

The Royal Mint produces gold bars and coins in the UK, though it actually supplies a large segment of the global market for gold bullion.

(As a side note, the global gold price is fixed twice per day in London – twelve of the world's biggest banks each have a seat at the table. So, in a sense, you could say the London establishment is the central hub of gold trading.)

Anyway...

The Royal Mint is in the final phases of developing a crypto-based platform for trading gold, and it's based on their own private blockchain.

The idea is that investors around the world can own and trade physical gold without having to physically take possession and store it. Instead, they trade the Royal Mint's new cryptocurrency, which is literally backed by gold – i.e. each token is a claim to exactly 1g of fine gold.

Now, there are two important takeaways I want you to note here:

First – the Royal Mint is an agency of the UK Government, and the UK is no banana republic. You can bet your bottom dollar that other government agencies across the globe will follow suit.

And you know what this means:
Demand for blockchain assets will increase. The crypto tide is rising, and a rising tide lifts all boats.

That's the first takeaway.

And the second?

Whenever you hear about developments like this, you need to look beyond the application and find out who is behind it. Because when governments spend big bucks implementing state-of-the-art infrastructure like this, there's usually a company (or multiple companies) making serious money.

In this case, it's a blockchain technology company called AlphaPoint.

That's the name of the company that is helping the Royal Mint to roll out this new cryptocurrency and trading platform.

And do you know what? This application is just one of many different projects and partnerships they have in the works right now.

So you might want to keep a close eye on these guys.

Let me know what you think!

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