Why the CEO of HashKey OTC Singapore thinks the old way of owning gold no longer makes sense

Jason Tay does not begin with the present, instead returning — almost insistently — to a moment most people think they understand but rarely interrogate.

In 1944, at the tail end of World War II, 44 countries gathered in New Hampshire to design a financial system that could stabilise a fractured world. “The whole idea,” he outlines, “was that the US dollar would now have a peg to gold… and all the world’s currencies would then be pegged to the US dollar.” It was, in effect, a chain of trust — gold to dollar, dollar to everything else — and for a time, it worked.

Until it didn’t.

By 1971, mounting fiscal pressures — from war spending, domestic programmes, and a growing imbalance between dollars in circulation and gold reserves — forced President Richard Nixon to suspend the convertibility of the dollar into gold, effectively dismantling the Bretton Woods system.

“When Richard Nixon did this thing called the Nixon shock,” Tay adds, “a lot of central banks in the world realised — hey, you can do this to us.”

That moment still lingers. Not in policy, but in behaviour. It explains, in part, why gold continues to surface whenever the world feels uncertain — why, despite decades of financial innovation, the instinct to return to something finite remains deeply embedded.

“People are getting it right,” he puts it plainly, “that gold is still very much a flight to safety option.” It cannot be printed or expanded at will. There is, as he puts it, “a limited supply of gold in the world.”

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And yet, the newly minted CEO of Hashkey OTC Singapore is careful to draw a line between instinct and reality. The past offers context, not a blueprint. Tay is unequivocal, “The Bretton Woods system will never, ever come back again.” The world has moved on — structurally, politically, and technologically. What remains is not a return to gold as an anchor, but a repositioning of gold within a far more complex system.

Central banks, for instance, no longer rely on a single reserve asset. They diversify. “They’re looking at gold, looking at US Treasuries… and increasingly exploring alternatives, including digital assets like Bitcoin,” Tay insists.

Gold still matters, but it no longer operates alone. That shift — from singular dependence to strategic balance — defines much of what is unfolding today.

From storage to movement

If the role of gold is evolving, so too is the way it is held. Tay breaks it down into three distinct forms: physical, paper, and digital. The first remains familiar — bullion, bars, the tactile assurance of something that can be stored and guarded.

The second, paper gold, comes in the form of exchange-traded funds, allowing investors to gain exposure without ever touching the asset itself. The third, however, marks a departure.

“Digital gold,” he says, “is the new frontier.”

The numbers, while still modest in absolute terms, point to a shift in behaviour. Over the past year, global gold ETFs grew from roughly $300 billion to $700 billion in assets under management. At the same time, tokenised gold expanded from $1.6 billion to $6 billion. More striking, however, is the activity. In a single quarter, Tay notes, “the trading volume of digital gold was more than the top five ETFs combined.”

The reason lies in what digital gold enables. Unlike physical bullion or ETFs, which operate within fixed trading windows and settlement periods, tokenised gold moves continuously. “There’s 24 by 7 trading,” Tay frames, drawing a comparison that borders on the obvious. Owning an asset you cannot act on when markets shift introduces friction. Digital formats remove it.

They also introduce utility.

“You can actually hold digital gold… and borrow against it,” he explains. In practice, this means gold no longer sits idle. It can be pledged as collateral, converted into other assets, or repositioned in real time. For institutional players — hedge funds, family offices, treasury managers — that flexibility matters. It allows them to respond, rather than wait.

This is where firms like HashKey operate. As part of the broader HashKey Group, which provides digital asset financial services across trading, custody, and infrastructure, its OTC desk sits within the flow of these transactions — facilitating large trades, conversions, and liquidity across markets. “We are the centre of it,” Tay says, “seeing the flows in and out.”

The penalty of buying small

Still, for all the structural shifts, Tay returns repeatedly to a simpler point — one that sits uncomfortably close to everyday behaviour. Most people, he suggests, misunderstand gold. The assumption that buying gold — in any form — equates to preserving value does not hold up under scrutiny. “You are penalised,” he says bluntly, “for not being able to afford the bar.” The issue is not gold itself, but access to it.

At institutional levels, gold trades in standardised units — one-kilogram bars, or the larger 12.5kg London bullion bars. These carry minimal price deviations from the global spot price. For retail buyers, however, entry points look very different. Jewellery, small denominations, and retail-grade products often come with premiums of 15 to 20 per cent above market value. Selling them introduces further discounts.

“You buy high, you sell low,” Tay does not mince his words. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The gap, he argues, stems from information asymmetry — a lack of awareness about how gold is priced, traded, and valued across different forms. It is also, implicitly, a design problem. Systems built for institutions rarely translate cleanly to individuals.

Digital gold, in his view, begins to close that gap. Fractional ownership allows entry at much smaller amounts. Pricing aligns more closely with global markets. And, crucially, it removes layers of intermediaries that historically shaped how gold was bought and sold. The promise, then, is not that gold changes, but that access to it does.

Movement as the real shift

Ask Tay what comes next, and he resists grand predictions. He does not argue for a reinvention of gold, nor does he position technology as a replacement for it. Instead, he frames the shift in quieter terms. “We’re not trying to reinvent what gold is all about,” he says. “We’re just trying to give it a better passport.”

It is a curious metaphor, but a precise one. A passport determines movement — where something can go, how quickly, and under what conditions. In its traditional form, gold has always travelled slowly, constrained by physicality and infrastructure. In digital form, those constraints begin to loosen. It moves faster, trades more easily, and integrates into broader financial systems.

“And when gold has a better passport,” Tay insists, “it means that you can travel around the world faster, more efficiently and in cheaper ways.” The underlying asset remains unchanged. What shifts is everything around it — the systems, the access, the behaviour.

And perhaps that is where the real transition lies. Not in gold reclaiming its place at the centre of the financial system, but in learning how to exist within a new one — less as an anchor, more as an instrument. One that people, and increasingly institutions, are still trying to understand.

Photography: Lawrence Teo
Art direction: Fazlie Hashim
Grooming: Angel Gwee
Stylist: Dolphin Yeo