OneGold, the online market for the purchase and sale of precious metals, and BitPay, one of the main bitcoin payment processors, announced a strategic partnership yesterday that will allow users to buy gold (and other precious metals) conveniently online and using cryptographic coins like bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum and some other stablecoins.

If this were not enough, the cryptocurrency community will be able to enjoy a 2% discount on purchases made directly online on OneGold.Com and paid in cryptocurrency.

Interviewed by Cointelegraph Kenneth Lewis (CEO of OneGold), he explained that this partnership should be considered as something absolutely natural since cryptocurrency holders are already normally used to diversifying their portfolio and, now, they will be able to do so also by purchasing precious metals.

The relationship between crypto and gold, in any case, is long-standing and is tightening ever more firmly; initially everything started with the definition of bitcoin as digital gold, which at the dawn of the market aroused a lot of bile transfer to the purists of the economy, then, later, when it started to appear clear that bitcoin, like gold, tends to behave like a safe haven asset, integrating the world of precious metals with that of cryptocurrencies seemed the natural evolution for both markets.

This is how we started working on stablecoins anchored precisely to the value of gold, which allowed to exchange property rights on the physical gold held by banks, without having to move it; this has led many observers to return to talk about gold standards, also because, in the meantime, many analysts have started to report the risk of explosion of the sovereign debt bubble and this, together with the maneuvers of the major central banks to acquire physical gold, of which they've been stocking up on for the past five years, has suggested to many that something was boiling.

Thanks to the partnership between OneGold and BitPay, now, the relationship between precious metals and cryptocurrencies becomes even closer and there is sure that many, especially among the wealthiest users (the so-called whales), will want to take advantage of the opportunity to diversify their portfolio and, why not, they may also decide, to protect themselves from trading volatility, instead of using stablecoin to buy precious metals.

Potentially, therefore, this partnership could profoundly change the cards on the table, but to see if it will actually bring out a new trend in the habits of the cryptocurrency community it will still take some time.