BIT, previously known as Matrixport, held its "Inside the Vault" event on Oct. 9, taking guests into the Le Freeport vault in Singapore for a firsthand look at physical gold. The latest figures on the Matrixdock website, BIT’s real-world asset tokenization platform, show that its gold token XAUm maps to about 529 kilograms of physical gold, or 529 gold bars, with a market value of roughly $71.06 million.
The report said those reserves are kept by professional custodians in professional vaults in Hong Kong and Singapore. The Le Freeport visit let clients see the storage conditions behind the product for themselves, instead of depending only on product descriptions or on-chain data.
From on-chain balances to physical bars
Real-world assets, or RWAs, have turned into a big topic in digital assets. But the same question keeps coming back: where are the assets behind the tokens, and can investors actually verify them? For investors, the basics matter. Does the asset exist? Who holds it? Can it be checked? Often, that matters just as much as the product idea.
At Le Freeport, near Singapore Changi Airport, guests went through strict identity checks and access controls before entering a high-security vault that is rarely opened to the public. With staff guiding them, they got to inspect physical gold bars up close. One attendee, Feng Mi (@KuiGas), said, "I didn't expect that gold on-chain could really be exchanged for a gold bar and taken home. The one I'm holding is a full 1,000-gram gold bar. It feels seriously heavy, and at that day's price it was worth about $140,000, close to RMB 1 million!" He said he had not expected on-chain gold could actually be redeemed for a bar to take home, and added that the 1,000-gram bar in his hand felt heavy and was worth about $140,000, close to RMB 1 million, at that day’s price.
How XAUm is backed and verified
The article said that seeing the gold in person is only one part of the story. For investors, the bigger questions are straightforward: how is the gold stored, how are reserves checked, and can it really be redeemed into physical metal? Matrixdock’s XAUm was shown as a live example of that setup.
Each XAUm token is backed 1:1 by one troy ounce of physical gold with 99.99% purity. The gold is held by professional custodians. And holders can check reserves through independent physical audits, reserve reports, on-chain proof of reserves, and gold allocation lookup tools.
Physical redemption has already taken place
The report also pointed to a real delivery case. In April 2025, Matrixdock completed the first physical gold redemption of XAUm at Le Freeport in Singapore. After 32.148 XAUm were burned on-chain, one 1-kilogram physical gold bar was delivered. The related on-chain transaction record can be viewed on Etherscan.
The article said that, taken together, professional vault custody, independent verification, and a completed physical redemption create verifiable links between on-chain assets and real-world holdings, instead of leaving that connection sitting only in product materials.
What Matrixdock said
Eva, head of Matrixdock, said, "Our products are built on trust, and trust is not formed overnight. It comes from long-term practice, transparency, and accountability. This vault visit gave our partners a rare opportunity to see the physical assets and infrastructure that support that trust with their own eyes."
The report said that as more real-world assets move onto blockchain rails, the RWA market needs more than product stories. It also needs hard proof of asset authenticity, transparency, and delivery capability. A vault tour does not replace an independent audit. But it does put part of the custody process, usually hidden behind trading screens and reserve reports, directly in front of clients.
For BIT, the event was framed as a way to show not just the physical gold itself, but also the operating structure behind the digital asset product through custody arrangements, reserve verification, and a physical redemption case.
