Just another kind of “paper gold”, certificates that are traded based on what is a presumed store of gold bars held in a vault somewhere.
We have only the word of the custodian of that vault that the gold is really there.
Who keeps tabs on the actual number of “bitcoins” that exist? Even easier to replicate than the “electronic dollars” the Fed is pumping into the favored few banks and other institutions “too big to fail”.
I sense a “con game”. Kind of like Al Gore’s “carbon credits”.
Answer: Anyone who wants to. The concept revolves around a distributed ledger that anyone can have access to call the blockchain. You can see the transactions as they occur in real time here:
I think I’ll stick with gold and silver. :-)