NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK / ACCESS Newswire / December 22, 2025 / For years, transparency in the global gold market advanced in theory faster than in practice. Standards evolved. Guidance tightened. And, expectations rose. Yet the most important part, implementation, lagged, constrained by fragmented systems that verified paperwork more easily than reality. That gap is now closing, and it is closing quickly.
SMX (NASDAQ:SMX) deserves some credit. It's emerging as one of the most active drivers of that shift. Following its engagement with the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, SMX is extending its physical-to-digital authentication framework into operational supply chains through a new joint initiative with FinGo and Bougainville Refinery Ltd. Together, the partners are evaluating a combined technology architecture designed to authenticate gold from mine and miner through refinery and export, embedding verification directly into live workflows rather than treating compliance as a tagged afterthought.
The pace matters. Historically, changes in the precious metals sector unfolded over decades. SMX technology changes that timeline, fast-tracking framework alignment to real-world deployment in rapid succession. It's not just signaling progress. It's demonstrating that material identity and supply-chain verification are transitioning from discussion to infrastructure.
From Market Frameworks to Operational Reality
The issue has never been a lack of good intentions. The global gold industry has spent years refining rules and standards to manage its complexity. The challenge has been the absence of tools capable of implementing those standards consistently across borders and participants. Fragmentation has always been the enemy.
Guidance from the London Bullion Market Association, the World Gold Council, and the DMCC increasingly demands demonstrable provenance, auditable custody, and verifiable compliance across the gold lifecycle. Yet these frameworks often operate in parallel, relying on different processes and oversight models. What SMX has been proving is that these requirements can converge operationally rather than compete administratively.
That results from SMX's technology addressing shared requirements at the material level. Through molecular-level authentication, gold can be invisibly and permanently marked, creating a persistent, immutable physical-digital link that remains intact through refining and downstream processing. Once embedded, the material itself becomes verifiable, reducing reliance on external documentation to establish authenticity or origin.
All of that is great. But equally important, and what distinguishes SMX's recent momentum, is how quickly this capability is being paired with operational partners and regulatory environments. The initiative with Bougainville Refinery Ltd reflects a deliberate move to take material authentication out of controlled environments and into national-scale supply chains, where credibility is earned through use, not assertion. This mirrors the trajectory of national frameworks unfolding in markets such as Singapore and Dubai.
Solving the Human Dimension of Compliance
Keep in mind that gold's identity challenge has never been limited to the metal alone. The people who extract, handle, aggregate, refine, and export gold represent equally critical points of risk when identity cannot be confidently established. Shared credentials, paper IDs, and informal verification processes have long undermined otherwise well-intentioned compliance frameworks.
FinGo's biometric digital identity platform addresses this human layer directly. By enabling verified identity aligned with KYC and AML requirements, the technology allows actions and custody changes to be attributed to real, authenticated individuals, even in remote or infrastructure-limited environments. This capability transforms supply-chain records from narrative descriptions into defensible event histories.
When combined with SMX's material identity, each supply-chain event links a verified human to a verified asset at a specific moment in time. For regulators, financiers, and counterparties, that linkage represents a meaningful step change in evidentiary quality. The value chain becomes stronger, more legible, and more resilient.
Bougainville as a Proof Point for Scalable Transparency
Bougainville Refinery Ltd provides the operational context that turns theory into practice. As a licensed refinery and export participant, BRL will evaluate how the integrated framework performs across real sourcing, refining, and export workflows, embedding authentication and identity verification directly into day-to-day operations.
The initiative aligns with Bougainville's broader commitment to responsible resource management and transparency. More importantly, it positions Bougainville as a reference environment for how advanced verification infrastructure can be deployed at a jurisdictional level, supporting both economic participation and international trust.
For SMX, this reflects a clear and repeatable strategy. First, align with global market authorities and frameworks. Next, demonstrate operational viability in real supply chains. Then, scale through replication.
A Sector Moving From Intention to Infrastructure
Don't underappreciate what's happening here. The speed at which SMX is executing across the precious metals space is notable. More importantly, these collaborations reflect a broader shift underway in global markets, showing that responsible sourcing, AML, and ESG are no longer treated as parallel efforts. They are converging on a single expectation and a single deliverable: proof.
By embedding material-level authentication, verified human identity, and auditable digital records into live supply-chain environments, SMX and its partners are delivering exactly that. The collaboration leaves no room for abstraction, signaling that infrastructure is not being discussed, it is being built.
Solutions that can move from policy alignment to operational deployment will define the next phase of trade. SMX's recent momentum, with help from valuable players, suggests that phase is arriving faster than many anticipated.
About SMX
As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.
Forward-Looking Statements
This information contains forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and assumptions regarding future events involving SMX (NASDAQ:SMX), its technologies, its partnership activities, and its development of molecular marking systems for recycled PET and other materials. Forward looking statements are not historical facts. They involve risks, uncertainties, and factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied.
Forward looking statements in this editorial include, but are not limited to, expectations regarding the integration of SMX's molecular markers into U.S. recycling markets; the potential for FDA-compliant markers to enable recycled PET to enter food-grade and other regulated applications; the scalability of SMX solutions across diverse global supply chains; anticipated adoption of identity-based verification systems by manufacturers, recyclers, regulators, or brand owners; the potential economic impact of turning recycled plastics into tradeable or monetizable assets; the expected performance of SMX's Plastic Cycle Token or other digital verification instruments; and the belief that molecular-level authentication may influence pricing, compliance, sustainability reporting, or financial strategies used within the plastics sector.
These forward looking statements are also subject to assumptions regarding regulatory developments; market demand for authenticated recycled content; the pace of corporate adoption of traceability technology; global economic conditions; supply chain constraints; evolving environmental policies; and general industry behavior relating to sustainability commitments and recycling mandates. Risks include, but are not limited to, changes in FDA or international regulatory standards; technological challenges in large-scale deployment of molecular markers; competitive innovations from other companies; operational disruptions in recycling or plastics manufacturing; fluctuations in pricing for virgin or recycled plastics; and the broader economic conditions that influence capital investment and industrial activity.
Detailed risk factors are described in SMX's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements. These statements speak only as of the date of publication. SMX undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward looking statements to reflect subsequent events, changes in circumstances, or new information, except as required by applicable law.
EMAIL: info@securitymattersltd.com
SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited
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