I just read that HelloGold secured funding from 500 Startups. Undisclosed sum, which seems odd. They ran an ICO before and raised funds too, and this wasn’t the first round they’ve gotten in Series A – they were valued at USD$12 million, post-money back in September 2017.
Anyway, social media was abuzz a few weeks back about how you could convert your recycled plastics and cans into gold. HelloGold deals with fractional gold, and when all is meant to be done, should expose this all on the blockchain (after all, that’s more fractions there for you!).
But maybe no one read beyond the headline? I haven’t seen a KLEAN recycler anywhere yet, but maybe the kicker is: 0.00059g of investment-grade gold for each recycled plastic bottle and each aluminium can.
The price of a 1 gram gold bar today is USD$43.49. Investment gold, i.e. paper gold you can buy at the bank (Maybank, is selling at RM5,569 for one ounce. That’s 28.3495 grams. So RM196.44 (if you convert USD$43.49 to Ringgit today, it should only be RM184.44, alas…).
So if we work with the RM196.44/gram amount, do you know how many cans or plastic bottles you’ll need before you get 1 gram of gold on the HelloGold platform? 332,949 items
If it takes approximately 31 empty aluminium cans to equal a pound (source), you need approximately 68 aluminium cans to get a kilogram, and the rate in mid–2017 was RM4–4.20 per kg (source). So in reality, to make RM196 in cold hard cash, you would just need 49kg worth of aluminium cans (or a mere 3,332 items).
It is clear you’re much better off recycling for cash at your local recycler, rather than getting fractional gold.
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