Tokenised gold could be exempt from fund regulations under FCA proposal - Financial Times

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has proposed that tokenised gold products could fall outside certain fund regulations, according to the Financial Times. This matters because tokenised gold sits at the intersection of two regulatory worlds: commodities and collective investment schemes. If the FCA treats tokenised gold as a commodity exposure rather than a pooled fund, issuers could avoid some of the authorisation and disclosure requirements that apply to funds.

For investors, the practical question is what backs the token and under what legal structure. A token that tracks allocated physical gold is different from a pooled vehicle holding gold on behalf of many holders, and the regulatory treatment may hinge on that distinction. The proposal, if finalised, could lower compliance costs for issuers and widen access to gold exposure in digital form.

What to watch: the consultation timeline, the final scope of any exemption, and whether similar thinking emerges in other jurisdictions. Regulatory clarity, rather than the token itself, is likely to shape how this market develops.