Kinesis Money vs. Holland Gold vs. GoldRepublic — honest comparison 2026

A KAU is a digital ownership certificate of exactly 1 gram of physical gold. The gold itself is held in a certified Brink's or Loomis Zurich vault in your name (legal title). A KAG works the same way for 1 ounce of silver.

• Kinesis account with your KAU/KAG balance (app + web)
• Full legal ownership of the underlying physical gold
• Right to physical delivery (minimum 100g gold or 200oz silver)

No "paper gold" as with some multi-layered ETFs — fractionalised physical gold with a digital wrapper.

The Cayman Islands is a commonly used jurisdiction for digital-asset platforms — not out of a tax-avoidance motive, but because of the VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) licensing framework of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.

Cayman supervision does NOT do the same as the AFM in the Netherlands. It does: require KYC and anti-money-laundering procedures, separation between customer property and company assets, and international recognition as an established framework.

Practically important: the gold of Kinesis customers is physically held in Zurich and Singapore, not in the Cayman Islands. The Cayman entity is the legal issuer of the tokens — the precious metal sits in established vaults elsewhere.

It is not a yield promise, it is a transaction-fee share. Concretely:

• Kinesis charges a 0.22% transaction fee on every buy, sell, send or spend
• 57.5%* of that total fee pool goes back to users via 6 different "yields"
• 42.5% goes to operating costs, partners (such as ABX) and company profit

No invented yield as in a Ponzi scheme — a fee-sharing model comparable to how some exchanges give traders a rebate.

*Yields are variable and not guaranteed. The individual yield depends on the share in the transaction-fee pool and the total trading volume on the Kinesis platform.

Correct — the Kinesis debit card went into public beta in the United States in February 2026. International rollout has been announced, but the Netherlands has no confirmed launch date yet. The European rollout is running alongside a process with the UK's FCA (the financial regulator in the United Kingdom).

What already works NOW for Dutch users:

• Depositing with iDEAL and SEPA
• Buying, selling and storing KAU and KAG (0.22% transaction)
• Monthly Holder's Yield on your position*
• Global Send — sending KAU to any email worldwide (0.45%)
• Physical delivery from 100g gold

In broad terms, allocated gold and KAU/KAG tokens fall under Box 3as "other assets". Reference date: 1 January. For current deemed-return percentages and the tax-free threshold: see the official Belastingdienst guidelines.

For your specific situation: consult a tax advisor. Tax rules change periodically, and for larger positions or special circumstances the treatment may differ from general guidelines.

Crucial difference from crypto exchanges: at Kinesis you have legal title to the underlying gold. The gold:

• Is NOT on the Kinesis balance sheet
• Is under no circumstances lent out ("we never lend out your gold")
• Is insured in Brink's and Loomis Zurich vaults
• Is your property — not that of Kinesis or the vault operator

Honest gap: an explicit trust structure or client-asset foundation, as sometimes used at Dutch financial institutions, is not explicitly documented in the public Kinesis documentation. The protection rests on the legal ownership structure and physical segregation in the vaults.

Security stack:

• Mandatory 2FA at login and for sensitive actions
• Mandatory KYC at account registration
• Compliance with the "travel rule" for digital assets
• Recent desktop inspection by CIMA
• KMS architecture on a Kinesis-bespoke fork of Stellar

For you: use a strong unique password, enable 2FA with an authenticator app (not via SMS), and secure your email account well.

Yes. Available to Dutch users (not to residents of the United Kingdom — they are explicitly excluded). Available payment methods:

• iDEAL (instant)
• SEPA transfer
• Cryptocurrency deposits

The platform is multilingual (including Dutch). The Kinesis Visa card is not yet available in NL (see the earlier question) — saving, sending and physical delivery already work.

Yes, but the amount scales with the platform volume. The monthly yield comes from the fee pool that Kinesis collects on all transactions (0.22% per buy, sell, send or spend, plus 0.45% on Global Send). Holders get their share in proportion to their position — not to how much they trade themselves.

• High-volume month: larger pool, higher payout per KAU/KAG share
• Quiet month: smaller pool, lower payout — can be temporarily minimal
• No fixed interest, no floor: it is a variable fee distribution, not a yield promise

In practice: in months with lower trading volume the yield drops noticeably. Expect an average over the year, not a fixed monthly amount.

*Yields are variable and not guaranteed; dependent on the total trading volume on the Kinesis platform.

Two independent movements. Your position (the KAU/KAG you own) follows the spot price of gold and silver. Your yield (the monthly fee payout) is paid out in physical gold and silver — not in money.

• Does the gold price fall by 10%? Then the euro value of your position and of the paid-out yield falls by 10%
• The number of grams of gold you receive each month does not change because of the price movement — that depends on the trading volume, not on the rate
• Over the long term you therefore build up grams of gold, not euros — that is a different investment profile from an interest-bearing savings account

For those who experience the short term as risky: precious-metal saving profiles usually call for a horizon of 5+ years. A gold-price correction of -20% in a year is historically not an exception.

Kinesis customer service runs centrally and is not Dutch-speaking. Support is via email (support@kinesis.money) and an international team — usually within 1-3 working days, English as the default language. There is no Dutch-language helpdesk as at Holland Gold or GoldRepublic.

What that means in practice (my own Kinesis Money experiences from the Netherlands since September 2019): for standard actions — depositing, buying, selling, KYC — you rarely need customer service. The app and the web dashboard are in Dutch. For specific issues (Visa card issues, KYC edge cases, technical problems) the support time is slower than at an NL-based provider.

Is Kinesis Money safe?

Safety is multi-layered and factually different from NL providers:

• Ownership: legal title to the physical gold (not on the Kinesis balance sheet, never lent out) — stronger than at most banks
• Supervision: Cayman VASP via CIMA (ref. 1877923) — no AFM/DNB supervision as with Holland Gold or GoldRepublic
• Compliance: KYC mandatory, 2FA, travel rule for digital assets
• Operational: live since 2019, vaults with Brink's and Loomis Zurich, monthly gold deliveries to customers with no known incidents

Honest summary: anchored differently from the NL providers, not less safe. But: a smaller market, a younger structure, no AFM safety net. For your own risk profile, consult a financial advisor.