iShares Gold Trust is a grantor trust that holds physical gold in custody and issues tradable shares representing fractional beneficial interests in that gold, allowing retail and institutional investors to gain cost-effective exposure to gold ownership without the complexities of direct physical custody. The Trust issues and redeems shares on exchanges through authorized financial institutions, with gold held in allocated storage across multiple global locations and valued daily using benchmark gold prices. The Trust generates revenue through an annualized sponsor fee calculated as a percentage of net asset value, a per-basket transaction fee for share creation and redemption, and passes through custodian and administrative expenses to shareholders; it performs no active trading or lending and holds no operating assets other than the underlying physical gold.