Key Highlights
- Tokenized gold surpassed $6 billion in market cap, up 53% in under six weeks, with over 1.2 million ounces of physical gold backing tokens.
- XAUT and PAXG, together controlling ~97% of the sector, raises serious counterparty, custody, and centralization risks.
- The surge in tokenized gold demand follows the historic run in gold price.
The tokenized gold market has surged to more than $6 billion in market capitalization as investors rush to flock into the blockchain-based versions of the precious metal.
Tether Gold (XAUT) and Paxos Gold (PAXG) together command 96.7% of the tokenized gold sector. While this underscores a high degree of concentration in a rapidly expanding corner of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, the dominance by two goes against the ethos of decentralization, and raises questions about counterparty and custody risks.
Even as the products offer 24/7 trading, fractional ownership, and integration with decentralized finance protocols, it can not match the security of traditional gold ETFs and physical holdings.
While this surge highlights blockchain’s ability to bring traditional assets into digital markets, the heavy reliance on Tether and Paxos also spotlights potential vulnerabilities. Any operational hiccup or shift in trust toward these custodians could ripple across the $6 billion-plus niche. Especially, given the composable nature of decentralized finance (DeFi), any domino effect from a small liquidation sometimes leads to market wide-disruptions.
Tokenized gold reserve rising past 1 million ounces
Further data from on-chain analytics platforms show the total tokenized commodities market, led overwhelmingly by gold, climbed 53% in under six weeks, adding over $2 billion year-to-date (YTD) and locking more than 1.2 million ounces of physical gold in vaults backing these tokens.
The surge follows one of the historic rallies in gold price in the past year, where it surged from $2,624/oz on January 1 to reaching the new all-time high of $5608.35 on January 28, 2026, as per Trading Economics data.
The recent rally in gold price
The market price of gold has hovered near or above $5,000 per ounce in January 2026, currently trading at $4,965, up 7.4% in the past seven days.
The recent blistering run, begun from early-2024, saw the metal gain roughly 140% during the period of the past two years. The supporting factors to this rally were persistent inflation concerns, geopolitical tensions, central bank buying, and uncertainty around U.S. monetary and fiscal policy.
This physical rally directly translated gains in traction into tokenized gold. XAUT’s market cap has climbed to $2.65 billion, reflecting gains of more than 50% over the past month. PAXG, meanwhile, sits near $2.3 billion, with similar momentum driven by institutional interest in compliant, audited products.
Also read: $100K, Not $150K: Standard Chartered Lowers Bitcoin Target