A standardized cutoff grade is essential for consistency and reliability within the digital gold mining ecosystem. When digitally mining gold that remains securely stored within the earth’s crust—free from production-related cost variables—establishing a fixed cutoff grade creates a clear departure from traditional mining methods.

In conventional mining, cutoff grades fluctuate in response to changing economic conditions, leading to inconsistent resource estimates. When gold prices rise faster than All-In Sustaining Costs (AISC), mining companies can ask engineering firms to revise their resource calculations. Without drilling additional holes or conducting new geological work, companies capture more of a deposit’s lower-grade material simply by lowering the cutoff grade. This approach transforms previously uneconomic gold into potentially viable resources. However, this viability remains conditional, given traditional mining’s dependence on the economics of physical extraction.

Digital gold mining operates fundamentally differently. It disregards production costs and fluctuations in gold prices, recognizing value solely based on the confirmed presence of gold, regardless of its earthly location. Under this model, all gold is considered homogeneous, similar to refined gold above ground. Defining and universally applying a single standardized digital mining cutoff grade across all technical reports is crucial for accurately determining Certified NatGold Resources™ for digital mining purposes. This ensures consistent tokenization and uniformity among NatGold Tokens.

Within this framework, factors such as gold prices and extraction costs become irrelevant. NatGold Tokens represent a weight-based transfer of intrinsic value from nature’s vault into a digital format. While market valuations of gold might affect token prices after tokenization, they do not influence the standardized weight or inherent consistency of NatGold Tokens.