© 2018 The Authors. We study the evolution of ideas related to creation of assetbacked currencies over the last 200 years and argue that recent developments related to distributed ledger technologies and blockchains give asset-backed currencies a new lease of life.We propose a practical mechanism combining novel technological breakthroughs with well-established hedging techniques for building an asset-backed transactional oriented cryptocurrency, which we call the digital trade coin (DTC). We show that in its mature state, the DTC can serve as a much-needed counterpoint to fiat reserve currencies of today.