A Brief History of the Goldback®
This section is written by Jeremy Cordon, President of Goldback Inc, and is a memoir of the beginning of the creation and distribution of the goldback. included are some never before published images of the early design process. There are several sub-sections on specific topics as well.
Chapter I: Genesis
The most appropriate place to begin this history, I believe, is with an intense dream that I had back in early April of 2019. Like most people my dreams are forgotten shortly after I wake up. However, occasionally one will linger, and this was one of the latter. In my dream, I was at a grocery store and I was paying someone with what looked like Goldbacks. Each one had a different value, and I was being given change in the same golden notes. The feeling of the exchange was that it was a normal thing. Various denominations of golden bills were being used as money. My business partners and I have been trying to make gold into a more functional money for years, and this felt like an epiphany because I saw people using gold as a regular money. This fit into the vision that anyone anywhere could use gold as their currency of choice.
Upon waking up, I called Adam Trexler, the president of Valaurum. Valaurum is our printing company and the only company in the world that produces high quality bill-shaped gold that they call “Aurum.” About six months before this dream, we contracted Valaurum to produce a small batch of gold notes for a separate project in Ireland. I told Adam the idea: “We want to make a 1/1,000th of an ounce gold note as part of a series of multiple denominations of interchangeable notes. Is it possible under any circumstances to create a 1/1,000th of an ounce product for close to say… $2?” (Gold prices were lower then.) This was a tall order. The cheapest thing that Valaurum had ever produced up until that point was about $8.00 retail. Having a product closer to $2.00 had simply never been done with the vacuum deposition technology. Adam told me that he would work on it, crunch some numbers and get back to me. He was excited though. Adam Trexler has a P.H.D in monetary history, and to see his technology used for making a functioning currency was a personal interest of his, to say the least.
At the time, I was serving as vice president for the North American Monetary Exchange, “NAMX” (a back-end company that services the United Precious Metals Association). The United Precious Metals Association (UPMA) vaults legal tender gold and silver coins for thousands of members nationwide. I was also a board member of a gold-backed crypto project that was active at the time. In order to turn the golden note idea into a reality I had to sell a lot of people on the idea. Knowing that it might be technologically possible was only the first step. I didn’t fully realize it at the time but it takes an enormous amount of work to turn a big idea like this into a reality.
The Brefine note was a complex, one-time project for Ireland that failed. NAMX produced the gold notes as part of a crypto-currency project for Quintric. Each note represented 1/40th of an ounce of gold but only 20% of the total gold content, or 1/200th of an ounce was actually in the bill. The rest was on a crypto ledger. Only about 400 of these survive today as the rest were melted down.
Valaurum has produced over a hundred different designs over the span of a decade. As part of making the Goldback series, we were able to negotiate exclusivity for this type of currency so we wouldn’t have immediate competitors.
The next person I talked to was my best friend and business partner, Chris Jensen. We had served together on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ back in 2010 and were companions for over six months! For anyone that doesn’t know, mission companions generally have to be together at all times, every day, for months. You either end up liking your companion or you want to murder them by the end. Chris and I were able to build a close, high trust relationship over this time together. Chris Jensen had more integrity and wisdom for his age than perhaps anyone else I have ever met, and I was really impressed by his kind and thoughtful approach to life. In 2015, I (Jeremy Cordon) was hired by Larry Hilton as the first full time employee to work on the UPMA project. Chris was hired as the second full-time employee just a few months later. We have been working together now in some capacity or other for about a decade.
The Utah Legal Tender Act of 2011 got a large amount of international media attention. It was drafted initially by our general counsel Lawrence Hilton, who mentored Chris and myself. These collector edition rounds were produced to commemorate the passage of that bill.
Chris, like me, had also been fascinated with Valaurum’s technology. He loved the idea of using it for a full currency series and started developing the idea with me further. Throughout the entire process of developing the Goldback, Chris was my right hand man for the entire project. When I write “we” throughout this history, I usually am referring to Chris and myself. Chris Jensen was, and is currently the president of NAMX. With Chris on board, the next person to recruit was Lawrence Hilton. Larry is our more senior partner and, early in our careers, was our mentor. Long before the Goldback, in 2011, Larry authored what became the draft for the Legal Tender Act in Utah. Larry established the Citizens for Sound Money, which later became the Utah Precious Metals Association, and then finally the United Precious Metals Association. Larry is a lawyer that also owns an insurance firm called Dominion Insurance in Alpine, Utah. Larry had a lot of questions, however he too became enthusiastic about the idea fairly quickly.
With Adam and my two key business partners on board, we set to work. My initial thought was to have a 1, 5, 10, 20, and possibly a fifty denomination. Even that initial simple idea ended up changing a bit. Adam said that a ‘fifty’ might not be possible and that we may have to settle for a 40. The most gold that Valaurum had ever put into an Aurum note was 1 gram (or 32/1,000ths) of an ounce.) (Remember, we wanted 50/1,000ths of an ounce,) and that was a technological feat they had just accomplished earlier in 2018. Before 2019, the Goldback would have certainly been technologically impossible. We gave Valaurum a $10,000 deposit to start experimenting with the 1/20th (or in other words 50/1,000ths) of an ounce size. I remember putting a lot of pressure on Adam to make the ‘fifty’ happen as that would be the largest denomination. Something felt ridiculous about having a 40 being the largest. The smallest gold denomination that Valarum had commercially produced up to that point was 1/10th of a gram, which was 3.2x bigger than the ‘one’ denomination Goldback. We were asking for two sizes outside of the scope of what they had done before. To summarize, Aurum was generally commercially produced (in thousandths of an ounce) in a range of 3.2 up to 32. We were asking for 1 up to 50. So the 50 denomination Goldback would be over 55% more dense than anything that Valaurum had ever achieved. The 1 denomination would contain less than a third as much gold as Valaurum’s smallest unit density. We have often been asked why the Goldback hadn’t been done before and this is why. The technology simply hadn’t been developed that far yet.
Initially, we had thought to do Liberty as the ‘one’ since it would be the most common. She swapped with Prudence on the ‘fifty’ because we wanted to make Liberty the most impressive. Mirkan and Teddy both put a lot of the early thought into which bills would have which elements. Note that the ‘25’ denomination didn’t exist yet but Truth, Justice, and Victory stayed in the same order.
The more pressing question became what would we put on the Aurum notes? Chris and I were talking with our co-worker, Edward (Teddy) Thompson, and he suggested using lady virtues because we were considering vertically-oriented women. Teddy pointed out that U.S. currency pre-1913 always had lady virtues and so using them, it would be a throwback to the past. Teddy and Mirkan Schoolcraft, both employees at the time, went on to spend well over 120 hours studying the different lady virtues and compiled nearly twenty pages of information Chris and I then used as a starting point for the designs for each denomination later.
We decided that lady virtues would be the most appropriate thing to put on the Goldbacks because the virtues that they represent make society worth living in. They are fundamental to the peace and prosperity we enjoy and are the cornerstone of western civilization. For these reasons, the virtues have been featured on money for centuries, so we decided to adopt them rather than choosing some historical figure or other less meaningful image.
Quint is a cryptocurrency that we had been working on at the time. The initial thought was to make a non-crypto version of it. That idea ultimately didn’t bear out because the Quint is based on U.S minted coin. Claiming the Aurum was “Quint” or federal legal tender coin would be illegal and it wouldn’t match the pricing.
Up until this point, we still didn’t have a name for the project. Initially, we thought of making the gold notes as an extension of the gold-backed crypto project. My wife begged us not to call them “Quint” (the name of the crypto). Upon further investigation, we found that the two projects could not be the same thing for legal and pricing reasons, and I decided to separate the two.
On the left side you can see the filter as proposed by the book. On the right side you can see how each potential name performed against each numbered point. I highly recommend the book if you are going to name anything. They didn’t even pay me to say that.
We ended up putting dozens of names through the filter. This image was taken in late April or early May. In hindsight, the only other name that probably wouldn’t have immediately failed is probably “Gold Virtues.” Even that name is a very distant second to the Goldback though. We were blessed to be able to get the website and trademark for it.
So what would we call it instead? This problem had us vexed for weeks. It was my brother, Michael, who, at a family dinner, gave us the tool that we needed. He recommended a book called Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick by Alexandra Watkins. That turned out to be just what we needed because it gave us an excellent filter for determining which names were good and which ones were trash. We had a full whiteboard of names including but not limited to: Gold Pillars, Gold Talents, Gold Leaves, Gold Phoenixes, Gold Lilies, Gold SegoLilies, Gold Petals, Gold Virtues, uQuint, Chrysós (Greek for gold), and, Larry’s favorite, MoZ (it is a mili-ounce, but also a wizard of Oz reference). Goldback was initially suggested by two people: Teddy’s friend in Michigan suggested Goldback as a name when hearing about the project, but Chris also came up with it independently.
We liked the name, “Goldback,” but we were reluctant to use it because we thought that it might be too close to “Greenback.” This goes to show how nervous we were about the possible negative repercussions of making the product at the time. As the weeks went by, Larry put the pressure on us to get the name done so we could start the trademarking process. I asked my brother-in-law, Braxton, what he would name the currency and described it to him. I didn’t give him any of the ideas. Immediately, he said, “Goldback.” For me, that was the tipping point for that name.
We put a lot of research and effort with our lawyers into making sure everything about the Goldback is 100% legal. See more here.
It looked like the name, “Goldback,” was taken though! We had our newest employee, Jeff McClellan do a google search, and he pulled up a crypto project based around a mine in California. Upon further investigation, he found that a couple of the board members were Michael Taggart and Stan Larimer. In a small-world moment, those two men were also board members on our gold-crypto, the Quint. I called Michael Taggart and asked him what the story behind Goldback was. He was very surprised that I knew anything about it since he had never brought it up. He described it as a dead crypto project, and that was enough for me. We went ahead and got the website and the trademark. We paid $8,000 for Goldback.com from a third party who had speculatively purchased it years before. The trademark was approved about a year later.
Chapter II: Art and Artists
Meanwhile, we had to find an artist. There were several good options. Abe Day was serving as the volunteer Chairman of the UPMA board just next door, and he had his own studio. He did the art for the Brefine note that we did with Valaurum the year before as well as all of the art for the cryptocurrency. He even designed the logo for Goldback. Abe seemed to be an immediate and obvious choice for doing the art on the Goldbacks themselves. Adam Trexler also suggested a couple of other high end artists including internal ones that had done other artwork for them.
Chris went ahead and told his mother about the Goldback project and got her emotionally invested in the idea of a precious metal barter currency. At that point, we had decided to use vertically-oriented lady virtues with apparel from various types of women from Utah’s history on the Goldbacks. Chris and I were sitting down together and trying to determine which pieces of symbolism from the notes Teddy and Mirkan produced we wanted to use. Larry suggested having a native tree on each of the Goldback denominations, which we ended up doing. It just so happened that Chris Jensen’s mother had specialized in drawing women for nearly three decades, and she decided that she would like to audition for the job.
I’ll never forget the first time Chris’s mother, Cheri Jensen showed me what she drew for her audition. Without being asked, she had spent several days taking our idea for Victoria and made a draft of her. She showed me in the parking lot of a grocery store as she was lending me some farming equipment. Cheri started describing the hours that she put into her drawing, and I was nearly moved to tears at her effort on our behalf. She put her whole heart and soul into working on this piece of art that in my mind was very much still an unrealized idea. I still get teary thinking about the memory of how I felt then now, and I’m not inclined to get that way very often. Within a few minutes of getting back into my car, I called Chris and insisted that his mother be the one to do the art for all the Goldbacks. He was reluctant to push for his own mother because he didn’t want it to look like nepotism, but he was happy that I was impressed by her work. Larry also agreed to use Cheri almost immediately, upon seeing her audition, despite having previously advocated for an independent artist with a higher profile.
Cheri Jensen drew this as an audition piece for the Goldback artwork. The level of excitement and personal interest that she had in the Goldback project made her stand out from other artists that submitted bids for the project.
We asked Cheri to do a lot of the art at the office so we could watch over her shoulder and make suggestions. Chris and I were eager to watch our ideas transform into reality through Cheri’s magic hands. My wife, Emily, was assigned to do the reverse image for the Goldbacks. Each Goldback denomination was going to have a separate image on the back that would take nearly the entire available space. Most of the art for the reverse side of the ‘one’ Goldback denomination was actually finished. It was to be a compilation of the State Capital building, the Utah Flag, and a drawing of the signing of the Utah Legal Tender Act that our general counsel, Larry, believes makes the Goldback legal tender in the state of Utah.
The ‘one’ denomination had to be as cheap as possible because it sets the cost for all of the other denominations. If the ‘one’ were to cost too much, then the premium for the ‘fifty’ would become obscene. For this reason, we decided to produce it at a loss; thus, making the ‘one’ Goldback the cheapest 1/1,000th of an ounce gold product in the world.
This is a draft of what the reverse side of the ‘one’ Goldback denomination was going to look like. Emily had even finished drawing the three separate images that would be merged together. Had we added a reverse image to the one denomination, then they would’ve taken significantly longer to print which ended up being important later.
It turned out that adding an image to the back of the ‘one’ denomination would have been cost prohibitive as it would’ve turned it from a product that lost about 10 cents each to one that lost about 50 cents each. Larry insisted that the negative image found on the backs of the various Goldbacks were actually beautiful in and of themselves and that we should scrap the artwork for the backs. The negative images created a golden back to the Goldbacks which was a fun play on the name of the very currency. “Goldback.” Adam pointed out that the negative image on the back is actually the strongest security feature against counterfeiting. The tentative plan then became to skip the back image on the ‘one’ Goldback denomination and to have images on the backs of the rest of them. This idea died when Emily, due to her recent pregnancy, got morning sickness and was no longer able to draw. In hindsight, we all like the negative images better than anything we had in mind to put on there. We are still playing with the idea of doing a back image on a limited special edition series someday.
While my wife didn’t end up drawing anything that ended up on a finished Goldback, she did give some valuable input while she was working at the office with Cheri, Chris, and myself. Cheri and Larry were both insistent on doing the images in full color. It would ONLY take six months per image. Emily, being an artist herself, had the credibility to talk Cheri out of it. Emily pointed out that the gold and black look that comes with a pencil drawing would be a lot less gaudy than full color. The Goldbacks are impressive because of the art, but also because of the fact that they are literally gold. Those two things go hand in hand. We abandoned the idea of using any color on Cheri’s artwork.
The images were being drawn in May 2019. We wanted to have them done in time for FreedomFest, which was in August, and Valaurum needed about six weeks to actually print out the Goldbacks once the art was finished. In order to have everything done in time there would only be about one week per image. Cheri almost fainted when we told her that timeframe because she was expecting six months per image, albeit colored images. It was an enormous blessing that we had Cheri because I doubt that any other artist could’ve accomplished what she did in such a short amount of time with the level of quality that she delivered. It was amazing to see how fast she could work.
Chris and I had worked together for many years, but we had never done a high-stakes art project together. It was extremely exciting to see our ideas sketched out before our eyes, but it was also somewhat stressful at times. To make matters worse, every other employee that worked in the office near the artist wanted to contribute too, and that resulted in a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen effect. I would make a suggestion and go downstairs, only to come back upstairs to see three other people hunched around Cheri suggesting other things. I suppose I can’t blame anyone for wanting to give some input on the designs that would eventually be seen by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.
Each design came out quicker than the one before. We gave Cheri options for which symbolism she could include, and then she picked what felt right to her. She also added little animals and things that we hadn’t suggested. It seemed to us that she knew what she was doing better than we did. We ended up giving her guidelines, and she manifested them in pencil in ways that surprised and impressed us.
There were other things going on too. I had to come up with the sizes for the Goldbacks. We couldn’t make them all the same size. Originally, Adam Trexler offered to make the ‘one’ Goldback denomination 2 inches wide, as opposed to the standard 2.57 inches, in order to make it more economically viable. Basically, the ‘one’ denomination would be the size of a business card. It was Larry that pushed for the ‘one’ denomination to be 2.57 inches as well. I was surprised and delighted that Adam did this for us. It was great that the ‘one’ wouldn’t be tiny, but we still had an issue with the ‘fifty’.
The ‘fifty’ denomination couldn’t be 2.57 inches wide because there was simply too much gold contained within. This created a uniformity problem; they couldn’t all be the same width. The ‘fifty’ couldn’t be smaller because it had too much gold and the one couldn’t be bigger because, otherwise, it would become transparent. I pushed the idea of doing incremental Goldbacks, with each denomination being slightly larger than the last. In order to make them look right, I had Teddy research all of the different currency sizes printed in the world and had him study the different ratios. We had to make the ‘one’ Goldback as short as possible, without it looking like a square, and the ‘fifty’ as tall as possible without it looking like a noodle. Both the ‘fifty’ and the ‘one’ somewhat push what “looks right” but it turns out that the most extreme ratio ever used for long currency was done in the United States with pre-1913 bills. The same ratio is used on the ‘fifty’ Goldback.
We had Emily draw a draft of what all of the Goldbacks would look like if they were stacked on top of each other. For about a week, the office was covered in paper cut-outs of different potential sizes for the different denominations. Every 1/8th of an inch taller the ‘one’ denomination grew was a big ask for Valaurum as it increased their printing costs. Note that the ‘twenty-five’ appears for the first time here, and that this is the last draft that the name ‘Quint’ ever appears. I think that Quint was written by mistake.
Every Goldback is a quarter inch taller than the previous denomination except for the ‘fifty’, which has a half inch jump from the ‘twenty-five’. The ‘fifty’ is also the only one that is 3 inches wide. We wanted the larger denominations to always be physically bigger than the smaller ones because it feels more intuitive to have it that way. Also, having different sizes makes each Goldback easier to identify when stacked on each other, and they are more friendly to the visually impaired. In fact, most countries use different size denominations for their currency. (But they don’t use any real gold!!!)
The creation of the ‘fifty’ could very well be its own multipage story. The prototypes had some serious issues, and there was some doubt in whether or not it would be possible to do. While Chris and I were working on the art with Cheri, Adam was busy trying to make the ‘one’ and ‘fifty’ denominations possible. I struggle to put into words how much praise Adam deserves for how much work he put into making the Goldback project technologically viable on his end. The man is a legend. We didn’t know that the ‘fifty’ would even be possible for sure until after the artwork for it was already done and the two smallest denominations were already in print for FreedomFest.
The first image for the ‘one’ denomination was done (we thought) so we had it scanned and sent to Valaurum for the digital aspects of the art to be finished. Bonnie Edwards was/is the second artist. She designed everything on the Goldbacks that wasn’t done by pencil, which is about half of what you see on the Goldback. She spent quite a bit of time on each denomination adding unique security designs, colors, and fonts to give the Goldbacks balance, continuity, and individuality. She also cropped and adjusted the pencil art so it would be displayed appropriately. Chris and I worked with Bonnie back and forth quite a bit, but oddly, Bonnie and Cheri only talked to each other only once or twice. It is interesting to note that the art on the Utah Goldbacks is of women and was drawn, designed, and put together by only female artists. We got the demos of the ‘one’ about a month before Freedomfest. The ‘one’ denomination was the most artistically challenging by far. For the full story on how it was developed, including a full series of never-before-published drafts and sketches, click the link below.
Full story on the creation of the ‘one’ Goldback here.
Chapter III: Early Critics and Reception
Not everyone thought that the Goldback was a good idea. We received quite a bit of pushback from one of our attorneys and a couple of UPMA board members that we regularly work with. We were told that the Goldback was an unproven concept (which was somewhat true), and that it was irresponsible to our new investors to create the Goldback and market it, when there was no guarantee of any sales.
While there were some vocal voices against the Goldback, they were a minority. One member came into our office to visit with us and to ask about precious metals. I had been working upstairs with Chris and Cheri and had been in the creative zone. I showed the member a picture of one of the sketches that we were working on and described the project. The member literally burst into tears of excitement and offered to do anything he could to help. A surprising amount of people really understand what we are trying to accomplish with the Goldback. There has never been a more technologically advanced way to spend gold in its physical form in human history than the Goldback. When it is time to make a small purchase with precious metal, people have always been forced to either use a messy tri-metal gold, silver, copper system or to break down gold digitally and store it somewhere else, which deprives you of the ability to hold the gold in your hand. Goldbacks are designed to be interchangeable with the same premium so that using them feels like a cash transaction. The ‘one’ denomination is specifically designed for small purchases. We may even make a Goldback that is designed to be cut into even smaller pieces someday.
It costed roughly $1,500,000 to create all of the initial 2019 Goldbacks. Once paid, that money would be tied up because the same funds would need to be used to reorder Goldbacks once the first set sold (if it sold, that is). We accomplished this fundraising by leasing the gold. We still lease Goldbacks from individuals to serve as rotating inventory.
We needed a retailer to actually sell the Goldback and make it available to the average consumer. Goldback Inc. had been set up to be a wholesale distributor for the Goldback, not to sell directly to individuals. The obvious candidate for the first retailer was the UPMA, who I already work with. The decision on whether or not to offer the Goldback wasn’t up to just Chris, Larry and I though. The UPMA has a board of volunteer members that have to approve of any new offerings to the membership with a three-quarters majority. It is very rare for the board to approve of anything new. The last approved addition was the U.S. minted silver eagles in 2015 (Platinum eagles are still in limbo.) Getting the board to approve the Goldback would prove to be an uphill battle.
The North American Monetary Exchange (NAMX) had just finished a new building with a vault in 2017 to service the growing membership of the UPMA.
The initial reaction by board members was mixed. There were at least three that were not supportive and one particular board member who was absolutely, adamantly against it. He went as far as to write a 20 page thesis on why Goldback accounts would bring a doom-and-gloom scenario upon the whole UPMA membership. Most board decisions are unanimous so even having one individual against it was a huge threat to the project moving forward. The board decided to create a sub-committee, consisting of about a dozen members, to make a recommendation to the entire body on whether or not we should move forward with Goldbacks. There were a total of nearly one hundred hours spent by UPMA volunteers working this issue out over the course of almost a month. Fortunately, most board members caught the vision and were excited to make it happen. Several board members are extremely engaged to this day.
I had to work long hours personally lobbying each individual board member of the UPMA, consisting of about twenty individuals, to get what eventually was the unanimous approval for offering the Goldback to the membership. To accomplish this, I had to paint the vision of what the purpose of the Goldbacks is all about. My case was largely that the UPMA was set up as an activist group to encourage people to circulate and spend gold. The Goldback is simply a natural extension of this mission using new technology. With that said, the UPMA specializes in legal tender gold and silver, not just any bullion product, so offering the Goldback looked like it might be a significant break from that tradition. Larry wrote an incredible legal argument in a letter to the Utah State Tax Commission about the Goldback’s potential legal tender status in the state of Utah. He shared that open letter with the UPMA board, which also helped sway many of the fence sitters.
There have actually been several other local currencies in the United States using precious metals in some way before the Goldback. The Liberty Dollar is the most infamous example.
I don’t fault anyone for being skeptical or worried about the possible negative repercussions of doing the Goldback. Chris and I were worried about even naming the currency a “Goldback” for fear of “the boogeyman.” We knew what happened to the Liberty Dollar so we committed ourselves to studying that event so that we could avoid every mistake they made. We went as far as to read the entire 50 page case by the FBI against them.
Around this time period (June 2019) we received the first 50 demos from Valaurum. With demos in hand, myself and the rest of my team went out to local businesses to see if they would be willing to accept Goldbacks as payment for goods and services. A couple of team members, including Jeff McClellan and Teddy Thompson, had already been doing this with the Brefinie bills. What we found is that if we talked to an employee, they would often be highly interested in the Goldback, but they wouldn’t feel comfortable taking it because it wasn’t their decision to make. When speaking with the business owner, though, we found that over 50% of the time that they would be willing to take the Goldback as payment for whatever service they were offering. Partial payments in Goldbacks had an even higher success rate. Very few of these business owners wanted to be identified on a list, however, for privacy reasons. The results were very encouraging. We even found that small businesses outside of Utah had an acceptance rate of about 30%. I was pleasantly surprised.
The final task that was done during this timeframe was the creation of the Goldback wallet. This wallet is designed to fit Goldbacks so that they don’t bend. Goldbacks can be bent, but that wears them out faster than necessary. The wallet was designed by our own Jeff McClellan who worked tirelessly with the manufacturers to get 800 said wallets produced. All of them have since been sold, and reorders have had to be placed. Wallets are available for sale through some of the distributors and on ebay.
By the time FreedomFest 2019 rolled around in August, some of the first ‘ones’ and ‘fives’ had finally been produced. Chris and I didn’t get to see them until we were actually there in Las Vegas. This would be the first time Goldbacks would be available for sale anywhere. Chris and I went and stayed with UPMA board member Mark Voelker in the famous underground house. He strongly advocated for the Goldback on UPMA’s subcommittee and was already at work spreading the news about it, with great success, in Nevada. Mark eventually was able to secure the existence of the Nevada Goldback project that is expected to be released sometime in 2020.
The Goldback wallet was important in our minds because the first thing that someone with a Goldback would want to do is to put them somewhere they can carry them like a wallet. Most women’s wallets will do the job, however, billfolds that are typically used by men will eventually wear creases into the Goldbacks. The Goldback wallet solves this problem and was designed to be able to fit in your pocket. It also displays all of the denominations when opened and has several other slots for cards or other currencies. Jeff McClellan did an excellent job designing these things. Over 1,500 wallets have been sold to date.
Chris is pictured on the left and I am on the right. We knew for sure that the Goldback was going to be a huge hit after coming to Freedomfest. This convention gave us more confidence and validation than we ever could’ve hoped for.
Goldback Inc. didn’t have a booth at FreedomFest; instead Valaurum sold the ‘one’ and ‘five’ Goldback denominations as a retailer at their stand alongside some of their other products. It was validating to see a seemingly never ending line of people purchasing Goldbacks during the convention. When the other stands were empty, there were always a few people waiting to get their hands on the Goldbacks. I noticed that people at the conference were showing each other Goldbacks and talking about them constantly. Attendees came to FreedomFest from all over the country and brought Goldbacks home with them. At this stage in the game we barely had a website, but the interest in the project was palpable. We drove home to Utah feeling that Goldbacks would become a huge success.
Since that time, Goldbacks have taken the internet by storm on Reddit and YouTube. UPMA did a promotion offering a Goldback for a new account and they grew by 500% in just a few months; over 20,000 new accounts. Goldbacks are now offered by some of the biggest names in the industry, like APMEX and JMBullion. Goldbacks constantly sell out and they are the #1 most sought after small denomination gold product in America, according to some of our retailers. Our struggle now is keeping up with demand. Valaurum is constantly raising money so they can scale. It is hard to imagine the project turning out better.
“Goldbacks had become popular on the Silverbug subreddit. The story then got picked up by popular YouTuber, “Silverpicker.”
We even have multiple other states in line to make their own local Goldback currencies. A Goldback can technically be used in a barter transaction anywhere, but we wanted to set it up as a series of local currencies. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with a couple dozen different new Goldback series over the next five or so years. If you’re interested in kickstarting a new Goldback region, then please reach out to us. It is an adventure starting a new currency, if nothing else.
Thank you for taking the time to read our story of the origin of the Goldback. We are still early in the game. Every purchase and every circulation of Goldbacks is a small revolutionary act that we hope you take part in. We appreciate you getting involved and are excited to see how the future will unfold. We believe that our best days are ahead of us.