The Mint is working with an American firm, CME Group, to develop and run the new service, which will also be available to fund managers and other third parties.
The Royal Mint does already offer gold trading services. Its gold can be held in Sipps (self-invested pensions) as of this year, although it is not an instant process.
Another Mint service, “Signature Gold”, allows investors to buy fractions of a gold bar stored in its vaults, again offering round-the-clock trading, for a 0.5pc annual management fee.
However, this is done via the Royal Mint’s website, not third-party investment shops.
Why is 'Bitcoin’ technology involved?
For large-scale trading to be possible on multiple platforms, a secure digital record of ownership is needed. This is where the new technology (called “blockchain”) comes in.
Essentially, it is an online ledger of transactions, updated cryptographically, whose entries cannot be deleted or edited once added.
Copies of the ledger are shared over the internet by multiple parties. For the record of ownership to be lost, all copies would need to be deleted.
Charlie Morris, a multi-asset investment manager at Newscape Capital and an expert on gold trading, said: “What this technology can do is exist in an open world. I think firms such as BullionVault and GoldMoney are great, but their system works beautifully in a closed circuit. Provided that you trust the organisation, which people do, that’s fine.
“But with blockchain technology, someone can trade gold here and in Japan, with it sitting in the Royal Mint’s vaults, and you don’t both need accounts with the same provider.”
Cryptographic ownership records can be either public or private.