Not a Fintech Story Mini Me and Gold Member might come up with better execution.
Bitgold is just a Prepaid MasterCard backed by gold instead of cash. I can get a prepaid card at my neighbourhood Safeway store or Money Mart. If I like gold, I just buy it at Scotiabank or Spider Gold Trust (symbol GLD) at the NYSE stock exchange.
There is zero innovation, not even a Cloud-based wallet that can transacts business and connected to your accounts. Talks about China, India and other international countries are just faint hopes - into the future. Canada is really small in terms of such services. The US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said crytocurrenies should be controlled to uncover money laundering, tax fraud and other crimes. Both China and India are cracking down hard on tax cheats. Goldmoney has stated it is dealing with lots of regulatory issues.
Getting Canada Mint is no big deal - just a safe storage place for gold. As the quip goes, Govt. and Crown corporations are never good at "picking winners and losers". It is bad endorsement.
It took Bitgold 6 months to come up with a Maximizer Plan - like a Pawn Brokering service or Margin account. If my prediction is correct that gold will fall thru' $1,000 to test $800 in 2017, all Maximizer account holders will be automatically closed out and their acccounts liquidated in the event of a drop of 10% in gold price - maximizing losses if they are dumb enough to sign up.