Tokenized Gold has become a new frontier in financial innovation. It not only retains the value-preserving attributes of gold but also possesses the liquidity, composability, and smart contract interaction capabilities of on-chain assets.

I. Preface: The Return of Safe-Haven Demand in a New Cycle

Since the beginning of 2025, frequent geopolitical conflicts, persistent inflationary pressures, and sluggish growth in major economies have once again increased the demand for safe-haven assets. Gold, as the traditional "safe asset," has once again become the focus, with gold prices repeatedly setting new highs and breaking through the $3,000 per ounce mark, becoming a global safe haven for capital. At the same time, with the accelerated integration of blockchain technology and traditional assets, Tokenized Gold has become a new frontier in financial innovation. It not only retains the value-preserving attributes of gold but also possesses the liquidity, composability, and smart contract interaction capabilities of on-chain assets. An increasing number of investors, institutions, and even sovereign funds have begun to include tokenized gold in their investment portfolios.

II. Gold: The Irreplaceable "Hard Currency" in the Digital Age

Despite the fact that humanity has entered a highly digitized financial era with the emergence of various financial assets, from fiat currencies, government bonds, and stocks to the more recent digital currencies, gold has maintained its status as the "ultimate store of value" due to its unique historical depth, value stability, and cross-sovereign currency attributes. The reason gold is called "hard currency" is not only because of its natural scarcity and physical non-forgery but also because it is backed by a long-term consensus of human society over thousands of years, rather than the credit endorsement of a specific country or organization. In any macroeconomic cycle where sovereign currencies may depreciate, fiat currency systems may collapse, and global credit risks accumulate, gold is always seen as the last line of defense and the ultimate means of payment under systemic risk.

Over the past few decades, especially after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, gold was once marginalized, with its role as a direct settlement tool being replaced by the US dollar and other sovereign currencies. However, it has been proven that fiat currencies cannot completely escape the fate of cyclical crises, and gold's status has not been erased. Instead, it has been re-endowed with the role of a value anchor in each round of currency crises. The 2008 global financial crisis, the global monetary easing wave after the 2020 pandemic, and the high inflation and interest rate hikes since 2022 have all led to significant increases in gold prices. Especially after 2023, with the combination of multiple factors such as geopolitical frictions, US debt default risks, and the persistence of global inflation, gold has once again reached the important threshold of $3,000 per ounce, triggering a new round of global asset allocation logic shifts.

The behavior of central banks is the most intuitive reflection of this trend. Data from the World Gold Council shows that over the past five years, global central banks have continuously increased their gold holdings, with "non-Western countries" such as China, Russia, India, and Turkey being particularly active. In 2023, the global central banks' net gold purchases exceeded 1,100 tons, setting a new historical record. This round of gold repatriation is essentially not a short-term tactical operation but a deep consideration of strategic asset security, the multipolarization of sovereign currencies, and the increasing instability of the US dollar system. Against the backdrop of the continuous restructuring of global trade patterns and geopolitics, gold is once again seen as the most trusted reserve asset. From the perspective of currency sovereignty, gold is replacing US Treasury bonds as an important anchor for several countries' central banks to adjust their foreign exchange reserve structures.

More structurally significant is that gold's safe-haven value is being re-recognized by the global capital market. Compared to credit assets such as US Treasury bonds, gold does not rely on the issuer's ability to repay and does not have the risk of default or restructuring. Therefore, in the context of high global debt and expanding fiscal deficits, gold's "counterparty risk-free" attribute is particularly prominent. Currently, the debt-to-GDP ratio of major global economies generally exceeds 100%, with the United States being over 120%. The sustainability of fiscal policies is increasingly questioned, making gold irreplaceably attractive in an era of weakened sovereign credit. In practice, large institutions, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and commercial banks, have increased their gold allocation ratios to hedge against systemic risks in the global economy. This behavior is changing gold's traditional "countercyclical + defensive" role, giving it a long-term positioning as a "structurally neutral asset."

Of course, gold is not a perfect financial asset. Its relatively low transaction efficiency, difficulties in physical transfer, and the natural drawbacks of being difficult to program in the digital age make it seem "heavy." However, this does not mean it will be eliminated but rather prompts gold to undergo a new round of digital upgrades. We observe that the evolution of gold in the digital world is not static value preservation but an active integration with fintech logic towards "tokenized gold." This shift is no longer a competition between gold and digital currencies but a combination of "value anchor assets and programmable financial protocols." The on-chain transformation of gold injects liquidity, composability, and cross-border transfer capabilities, making gold not only a wealth carrier in the physical world but also a stable asset anchor in the digital financial system.

It is particularly worth noting that gold, as a store of value, has a complementary rather than an absolute substitutable relationship with Bitcoin, the "digital gold." Bitcoin has a much higher volatility than gold and lacks sufficient short-term price stability. In environments with high macroeconomic policy uncertainty, it is more likely to be seen as a risky asset rather than a safe-haven asset. In contrast, gold, with its vast spot market, mature financial derivatives system, and widespread acceptance by central banks, still maintains the triple advantages of being countercyclical, low-volatile, and highly recognized. From an asset allocation perspective, gold remains one of the most important risk-hedging factors in constructing a global investment portfolio and has an irreplaceable underlying "financial neutrality" status.

Tokenized Gold Deep Research Report: Shaping a New On-Chain Paradigm for Safe-Haven Assets

Overall, whether from the perspective of macro-financial security, currency system reshaping, or global capital allocation restructuring, gold's status as hard currency has not been weakened by the rise of digital assets. Instead, it has been enhanced by the strengthening of global trends such as "de-dollarization," geopolitical fragmentation, and sovereign credit crises. In the digital age, gold is both the stabilizing force of the traditional financial world and a potential value anchor for future on-chain financial infrastructure. The future of gold is not to be replaced but to continue its historical mission as the "ultimate credit asset" in both old and new financial systems through tokenization and programmability.

III. Tokenized Gold: The On-Chain Expression of Gold

Tokenized Gold is essentially a technological and financial practice that maps gold assets onto a blockchain network in the form of cryptographic assets. It represents the ownership or value of physical gold through smart contracts as tokens on the chain, allowing gold to no longer be confined to static records in vaults, warehouse receipts, and banking systems but to freely circulate and combine in a standardized, programmable form on the chain. Tokenized Gold is not the creation of a new type of financial asset but a reconstruction of injecting traditional commodities into a new financial system in digital form. It embeds this hard currency, which has spanned historical cycles, into the "decentralized financial operating system" represented by blockchain, giving birth to a new value-bearing structure.

This innovation can be understood at the macro level as an important part of the global asset digitization wave. The widespread adoption of smart contract platforms such as Ethereum has provided the underlying programmable foundation for the on-chain expression of gold. The development of stablecoins in recent years has also verified the market demand and technical feasibility of "on-chain value anchor assets." Tokenized Gold is, in a sense, an extension and elevation of the stablecoin concept. It not only pursues price anchoring but also has real, credit-default-risk-free hard assets behind it. Unlike fiat-anchored stablecoins, gold-anchored tokens naturally摆脱单一主权货币的波动性与监管风险，具备跨境中立性和长期抗通胀能力。这一点在当前美元主导的稳定币格局日益引发监管与地缘敏感问题的背景下，显得尤为重要。

From a micro-mechanism perspective, the creation of tokenized gold typically relies on two pathways: one is the "100% physical collateral + on-chain issuance" custody model, and the other is the "programmatic mapping + verifiable asset certificate" protocol model. The former, such as Tether Gold (XAUT) and PAX Gold (PAXG), both have physical gold custody institutions behind them, ensuring that each token corresponds one-to-one with a certain amount of physical gold and undergoes regular audits and off-chain reporting. The latter, such as Cache Gold and Digital Gold Token projects, attempts to enhance the verifiability and liquidity of tokens by binding programmable asset certificates with gold batch numbers.

Regardless of the approach taken, the core goal is to establish a mechanism for the credible representation, liquidity, and settlement of gold on the chain, thereby achieving real-time transferability, divisibility, and composability of gold assets, breaking the traditional gold market's fragmentation, high barriers to entry, and low liquidity.

The greatest value of tokenized gold is not just the progress of technical expression but its fundamental transformation of the gold market's functionality. In the traditional gold market, the trading of physical gold is usually accompanied by high transportation, insurance, and storage costs. Paper gold and ETFs, on the other hand, lack true ownership and on-chain composability. Tokenized gold attempts to provide a new form of gold that is divisible, real-time settled, and cross-border mobile through its on-chain native asset form, transforming this "static asset" into a "high liquidity + high transparency" dynamic financial instrument. This characteristic greatly expands the use cases of gold in DeFi and the global financial market, enabling it not only to serve as a value reserve but also to participate in multiple layers of financial activities such as collateral lending, leveraged trading, yield farming, and even cross-border clearing and settlement.

Furthermore, tokenized gold is driving a shift in the gold market from centralized to decentralized infrastructure. In the past, the value flow of gold heavily relied on traditional centralized nodes such as the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), clearing banks, and vault custody institutions, with issues of information asymmetry, cross-border delays, and high costs. Tokenized gold, with on-chain smart contracts as the carrier, has built a permissionless and trustless gold asset issuance and circulation system. It transparentizes and streamlines the traditional gold's entitlement, settlement, and custody processes, significantly lowering market entry barriers and allowing retail users and developers to equally access the global gold liquidity network.

Overall, tokenized gold represents a profound value reconstruction and system integration of traditional physical assets in the blockchain world. It not only inherits the safe-haven attributes and store-of-value functions of gold but also expands the functional boundaries of gold as a digital asset in the new financial system. Against the backdrop of global financial digitization and the multipolarization of currency systems, the on-chain reconstruction of gold is destined to be not a temporary experiment but a long-term process accompanying the evolution of financial sovereignty and technological paradigms. Whoever can establish a tokenized gold standard that combines compliance, liquidity, composability, and cross-border capabilities in this process may hold the discourse power of the future "on-chain hard currency."

IV. Analysis and Comparison of Mainstream Tokenized Gold Projects

In the current crypto-financial ecosystem, tokenized gold, as a bridge connecting the traditional precious metal market and the emerging on-chain asset system, has given birth to a number of representative projects. These projects explore from multiple dimensions such as technical architecture, custody mechanism, compliance path, and user experience, gradually building a market prototype of "on-chain gold." Although they all follow the basic principle of "physical gold collateral + on-chain mapping" in their core logic, their specific implementation paths and focuses are different, reflecting that the tokenized gold track is still in a stage of competition and undetermined standards.

The most representative tokenized gold projects currently include Tether Gold (XAUT), PAX Gold (PAXG), Cache Gold (CGT), Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT), and Aurus Gold (AWG), among others. Tether Gold and PAX Gold can be regarded as the current industry's duopoly, leading other projects in terms of market value and liquidity. They also enjoy a more advantageous position in user trust and exchange support due to their mature custody systems, higher transparency, and stronger brand endorsements.

Tether Gold (XAUT), launched by the stablecoin leader Tether, is characterized by its one-to-one anchor with the standard gold bars of the London gold market. Each XAUT corresponds to 1 ounce of physical gold custodied in Switzerland. The project relies on the Bitfinex ecosystem behind Tether, offering first-mover advantages in terms of liquidity, trading channels, and stability. However, Tether Gold is relatively conservative in terms of disclosure and transparency. Users cannot directly view the binding information of each token with specific gold bar numbers on the chain. This black-box asset custody approach is controversial in the decentralized crypto community. Additionally, XAUT's compliance layout is mainly aimed at international offshore users, and the entry barrier remains high for investors who wish to invest in tokenized gold through legitimate financial channels.

In contrast, PAX Gold (PAXG), launched by the licensed US fintech company Paxos, has gone further in terms of compliance and asset transparency. Each PAXG also represents 1 ounce of London standard gold, and through verifiable gold bar serial numbers and custody data, it provides users with on-chain queryable asset correspondence information. More importantly, Paxos, as a trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), has its gold asset custody and issuance mechanism subject to regulatory scrutiny, which enhances the compliance endorsement of PAXG to a certain extent. The project has also actively expanded its DeFi compatibility and has been integrated into multiple DeFi protocols such as Aave and Uniswap. This allows PAXG to be used as collateral for lending and liquidity mining, thereby releasing the compound value of gold assets on the chain.

Cache Gold (CGT) represents another attempt at tokenized gold that leans more towards decentralization and verifiable asset certificates. The project uses a "Token Wrapper + gold bar number registration" system, with each CGT representing 1 gram of physical gold and being bound to the batch number of gold in an independent custody warehouse. Its biggest feature is the strong binding mechanism between on-chain and off-chain, that is, each gold collateral must generate a corresponding Proof of Reserve and record batch information and flow status on the blockchain. This mechanism allows users to more transparently track the physical assets behind the tokens. However, it also poses challenges for the project in terms of custody efficiency and liquidity organization, and it has not yet been widely promoted to mainstream DeFi scenarios.

Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) is the official tokenized gold product launched by the Perth Mint, a state-owned precious metal minting institution in Australia. The gold assets behind the project are guaranteed by the Australian government and custodied in a national vault, making it theoretically one of the most creditworthy tokenized gold projects. However, due to its low participation in the cryptocurrency market, scarce trading pairs, and lack of DeFi compatibility, the project, despite its high security and official endorsement, lags far behind Tether Gold and PAX Gold in terms of market liquidity and user popularity.

There are also innovative projects such as Aurus Gold (AWG) and Meld Gold, which attempt to build a new paradigm for tokenized gold through diversified custodians, NFT packaging, and cross-chain issuance. For example, Aurus Gold adopts a joint issuance by multiple mints and integrates with multiple exchanges and wallets to enhance the anti-centralization dependence of gold tokens. It also introduces NFTs as gold packaging certificates to provide flexibility in asset management. These projects are more in line with the Web3 native asset system in concept but are still in their early stages and have not yet established widespread market consensus.

Overall, the current tokenized gold market presents a bipolar pattern: on the one hand, there are "centralized + high-trust" projects represented by Tether Gold and PAX Gold, which quickly occupy the mainstream market share with the endorsement of large institutions, mature custody structures, and exchange access advantages; on the other hand, there are "decentralized + verifiable" projects represented by Cache Gold and Aurus Gold, which emphasize asset transparency and on-chain autonomy but are still limited in actual use by market acceptance, custody coordination efficiency, and DeFi integration levels. The competition between the two also reflects the ongoing博弈 between "trust threshold" and "technical ideal" in the entire crypto-financial ecosystem.

From the perspective of industry evolution, the future tokenized gold standard is likely to evolve towards a convergence of "compliance, verifiability, composability, and cross-chain capabilities." On the one hand, only assets that establish transparent custody systems in a strong regulatory environment and pass audits and on-chain verification can gain the long-term trust of mainstream institutions and users. On the other hand, projects must truly integrate into DeFi and Web3 infrastructure to achieve the "asset primitivization" of gold tokens. Otherwise, they will merely be "gold certificates in financial packaging," unable to release sufficient value and network effects.

V. Tokenized Gold from an Investor's Perspective: Value, Opportunities, and Risks

Tokenized gold, as an emerging financial instrument that combines traditional value anchoring with on-chain asset characteristics, is gradually becoming an alternative asset option in investors' portfolios. Unlike traditional gold ETFs or physical gold bars, its core value lies not only in the safe-haven attributes represented by gold itself but also in the enhanced liquidity, improved transaction convenience, and expanded composability achieved through the digitization of assets via blockchain infrastructure. From an investor's perspective, the appeal of tokenized gold lies in its ability to find a relatively balanced entry point between "financial stability anchor" and "technological innovation dividend," becoming a practical path to configuring "on-chain hard currency" in the highly volatile crypto market.

Firstly, tokenized gold naturally inherits the basic investment logic of gold as a global safe-haven asset. Historical experience shows that during cycles of increased macroeconomic uncertainty, intensified inflationary pressures, or rising geopolitical risks, gold typically receives a risk premium from the capital market, becoming the preferred target for institutions and individual investors to hedge against the depreciation of fiat currency

purchasing power and severe market fluctuations. Tokenized gold continues this attribute, especially during periods of violent crypto market fluctuations, providing investors with asset allocation opportunities that have low or even negative correlations. During several crypto market downturns in 2022 and 2023, the price fluctuations of tokens such as PAXG and XAUT were significantly smaller than those of mainstream crypto assets, and they even became a "short-term safe-haven port" for capital on the chain.

Secondly, tokenized gold endows gold assets with unprecedented liquidity and accessibility. Traditional gold investment has several pain points, including high transaction barriers, limited trading hours, inconvenient deposit and withdrawal, and strong geographical restrictions. In contrast, tokenized gold, as an ERC-20 or cross-chain asset, can be instantly transferred in any wallet that supports public chains worldwide and can also perform a variety of advanced financial operations such as high-frequency trading, DeFi staking, and cross-border settlement. This leap in liquidity greatly expands the operational space of gold assets, no longer confining them to the "asset storage" function but making them a dynamically manageable "on-chain cash flow base asset."

More importantly, with the gradual maturation of DeFi and Web3 infrastructure, tokenized gold is acquiring the financial attribute of composability, making it not just "digital gold" but gradually becoming a component module of on-chain native assets. Investors can obtain stablecoins by staking PAXG, thereby releasing liquidity to participate in other investment opportunities; they can also add gold assets to liquidity pools to earn income; or they can even transfer tokenized gold across chains through multi-chain interoperability protocols to serve global payment and settlement needs. This "asset-as-protocol" concept is an innovative path that cannot be realized in the traditional gold financial system.

However, despite its many advantages, tokenized gold still has certain structural risks and development bottlenecks that investors need to weigh carefully when participating. First is the custody and redemption risk. The vast majority of tokenized gold projects still rely on centralized physical custody systems, and investors must trust the issuer to properly store the gold and provide physical redemption when necessary. The redemption process for most projects is currently cumbersome, with high barriers to entry and geographical restrictions. Especially in extreme market conditions, whether users can successfully complete the exchange from on-chain assets to physical gold remains uncertain in terms of law and operations. In addition, some projects lack sufficient information disclosure in terms of custody audits and asset proof, and this lack of transparency can reduce user confidence and is not conducive to its long-term construction as an "on-chain safe-haven anchor."

Second is the external risk of compliance and regulation. Since gold itself is a high-value sensitive asset, its tokenization process involves multiple regulatory requirements such as the precious metal market, securities law, and KYC/AML. The legality and regulatory path of tokenized gold are not unified across different jurisdictions, which means that the legal risks faced by projects have a high degree of uncertainty. Especially for institutional users who wish to use this type of asset for cross-border settlement or large transactions, how to operate steadily within the compliance framework is a key factor in determining their acceptance.

Finally, from a market game theory perspective, the status of tokenized gold in an actual investment portfolio is still in an "auxiliary configuration" role and is unlikely to become a dominant asset. Although its safe-haven and stability characteristics have significant value in downturn cycles, its performance in a bull market is often inferior to that of riskier crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. This "stable value but limited growth" characteristic makes tokenized gold more suitable as a tool for hedging volatility and stabilizing portfolio returns, rather than a core investment target for pursuing high growth.

Overall, for investors, tokenized gold is both a "value storage tool" for a new type of asset and a configuration option prioritizing "security" in the digital economy. Its underlying logic is built on the millennia of stable value of gold, reshaping its trading, custody, and composability through blockchain technology. As the DeFi ecosystem further develops, cross-chain infrastructure improves, and compliance paths become clearer, tokenized gold may play a more important role in the "full lifecycle management of digital assets." For individual users, it is a practical path to enhancing asset risk resistance and engaging in countercyclical configuration. For institutions, it may become a "core asset" in building on-chain portfolios, thereby ushering in a new era of "on-chain asset management" in the true sense.

VI. Conclusion: The On-Chain Upgrade of Gold Is Not a Replacement but a Continuation

In an era of unstable credit, increased volatility of the US dollar, and reshaping of the global monetary landscape, gold is undergoing a process of "digital rediscovery." It is not being replaced by digital assets such as Bitcoin but is being tokenized, programmable, and smart-contracted, thereby participating more flexibly in the construction of the new financial system. For users, this evolved gold remains "hard currency," just in a different on-chain form. It still provides a sense of security, value preservation, and risk resistance, becoming a true "stability anchor" in the digital world.

Tokenized Gold has become a new frontier in financial innovation. It not only retains the value-preserving attributes of gold but also possesses the liquidity, composability, and smart contract interaction capabilities of on-chain assets.

I. Preface: The Return of Safe-Haven Demand in a New Cycle

Since the beginning of 2025, frequent geopolitical conflicts, persistent inflationary pressures, and sluggish growth in major economies have once again increased the demand for safe-haven assets. Gold, as the traditional "safe asset," has once again become the focus, with gold prices repeatedly setting new highs and breaking through the $3,000 per ounce mark, becoming a global safe haven for capital. At the same time, with the accelerated integration of blockchain technology and traditional assets, Tokenized Gold has become a new frontier in financial innovation. It not only retains the value-preserving attributes of gold but also possesses the liquidity, composability, and smart contract interaction capabilities of on-chain assets. An increasing number of investors, institutions, and even sovereign funds have begun to include tokenized gold in their investment portfolios.

II. Gold: The Irreplaceable "Hard Currency" in the Digital Age

Despite the fact that humanity has entered a highly digitized financial era with the emergence of various financial assets, from fiat currencies, government bonds, and stocks to the more recent digital currencies, gold has maintained its status as the "ultimate store of value" due to its unique historical depth, value stability, and cross-sovereign currency attributes. The reason gold is called "hard currency" is not only because of its natural scarcity and physical non-forgery but also because it is backed by a long-term consensus of human society over thousands of years, rather than the credit endorsement of a specific country or organization. In any macroeconomic cycle where sovereign currencies may depreciate, fiat currency systems may collapse, and global credit risks accumulate, gold is always seen as the last line of defense and the ultimate means of payment under systemic risk.

Over the past few decades, especially after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, gold was once marginalized, with its role as a direct settlement tool being replaced by the US dollar and other sovereign currencies. However, it has been proven that fiat currencies cannot completely escape the fate of cyclical crises, and gold's status has not been erased. Instead, it has been re-endowed with the role of a value anchor in each round of currency crises. The 2008 global financial crisis, the global monetary easing wave after the 2020 pandemic, and the high inflation and interest rate hikes since 2022 have all led to significant increases in gold prices. Especially after 2023, with the combination of multiple factors such as geopolitical frictions, US debt default risks, and the persistence of global inflation, gold has once again reached the important threshold of $3,000 per ounce, triggering a new round of global asset allocation logic shifts.

The behavior of central banks is the most intuitive reflection of this trend. Data from the World Gold Council shows that over the past five years, global central banks have continuously increased their gold holdings, with "non-Western countries" such as China, Russia, India, and Turkey being particularly active. In 2023, the global central banks' net gold purchases exceeded 1,100 tons, setting a new historical record. This round of gold repatriation is essentially not a short-term tactical operation but a deep consideration of strategic asset security, the multipolarization of sovereign currencies, and the increasing instability of the US dollar system. Against the backdrop of the continuous restructuring of global trade patterns and geopolitics, gold is once again seen as the most trusted reserve asset. From the perspective of currency sovereignty, gold is replacing US Treasury bonds as an important anchor for several countries' central banks to adjust their foreign exchange reserve structures.

More structurally significant is that gold's safe-haven value is being re-recognized by the global capital market. Compared to credit assets such as US Treasury bonds, gold does not rely on the issuer's ability to repay and does not have the risk of default or restructuring. Therefore, in the context of high global debt and expanding fiscal deficits, gold's "counterparty risk-free" attribute is particularly prominent. Currently, the debt-to-GDP ratio of major global economies generally exceeds 100%, with the United States being over 120%. The sustainability of fiscal policies is increasingly questioned, making gold irreplaceably attractive in an era of weakened sovereign credit. In practice, large institutions, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and commercial banks, have increased their gold allocation ratios to hedge against systemic risks in the global economy. This behavior is changing gold's traditional "countercyclical + defensive" role, giving it a long-term positioning as a "structurally neutral asset."

Of course, gold is not a perfect financial asset. Its relatively low transaction efficiency, difficulties in physical transfer, and the natural drawbacks of being difficult to program in the digital age make it seem "heavy." However, this does not mean it will be eliminated but rather prompts gold to undergo a new round of digital upgrades. We observe that the evolution of gold in the digital world is not static value preservation but an active integration with fintech logic towards "tokenized gold." This shift is no longer a competition between gold and digital currencies but a combination of "value anchor assets and programmable financial protocols." The on-chain transformation of gold injects liquidity, composability, and cross-border transfer capabilities, making gold not only a wealth carrier in the physical world but also a stable asset anchor in the digital financial system.

It is particularly worth noting that gold, as a store of value, has a complementary rather than an absolute substitutable relationship with Bitcoin, the "digital gold." Bitcoin has a much higher volatility than gold and lacks sufficient short-term price stability. In environments with high macroeconomic policy uncertainty, it is more likely to be seen as a risky asset rather than a safe-haven asset. In contrast, gold, with its vast spot market, mature financial derivatives system, and widespread acceptance by central banks, still maintains the triple advantages of being countercyclical, low-volatile, and highly recognized. From an asset allocation perspective, gold remains one of the most important risk-hedging factors in constructing a global investment portfolio and has an irreplaceable underlying "financial neutrality" status.

Tokenized Gold Deep Research Report: Shaping a New On-Chain Paradigm for Safe-Haven Assets

Overall, whether from the perspective of macro-financial security, currency system reshaping, or global capital allocation restructuring, gold's status as hard currency has not been weakened by the rise of digital assets. Instead, it has been enhanced by the strengthening of global trends such as "de-dollarization," geopolitical fragmentation, and sovereign credit crises. In the digital age, gold is both the stabilizing force of the traditional financial world and a potential value anchor for future on-chain financial infrastructure. The future of gold is not to be replaced but to continue its historical mission as the "ultimate credit asset" in both old and new financial systems through tokenization and programmability.

III. Tokenized Gold: The On-Chain Expression of Gold

Tokenized Gold is essentially a technological and financial practice that maps gold assets onto a blockchain network in the form of cryptographic assets. It represents the ownership or value of physical gold through smart contracts as tokens on the chain, allowing gold to no longer be confined to static records in vaults, warehouse receipts, and banking systems but to freely circulate and combine in a standardized, programmable form on the chain. Tokenized Gold is not the creation of a new type of financial asset but a reconstruction of injecting traditional commodities into a new financial system in digital form. It embeds this hard currency, which has spanned historical cycles, into the "decentralized financial operating system" represented by blockchain, giving birth to a new value-bearing structure.

This innovation can be understood at the macro level as an important part of the global asset digitization wave. The widespread adoption of smart contract platforms such as Ethereum has provided the underlying programmable foundation for the on-chain expression of gold. The development of stablecoins in recent years has also verified the market demand and technical feasibility of "on-chain value anchor assets." Tokenized Gold is, in a sense, an extension and elevation of the stablecoin concept. It not only pursues price anchoring but also has real, credit-default-risk-free hard assets behind it. Unlike fiat-anchored stablecoins, gold-anchored tokens naturally摆脱单一主权货币的波动性与监管风险，具备跨境中立性和长期抗通胀能力。这一点在当前美元主导的稳定币格局日益引发监管与地缘敏感问题的背景下，显得尤为重要。

From a micro-mechanism perspective, the creation of tokenized gold typically relies on two pathways: one is the "100% physical collateral + on-chain issuance" custody model, and the other is the "programmatic mapping + verifiable asset certificate" protocol model. The former, such as Tether Gold (XAUT) and PAX Gold (PAXG), both have physical gold custody institutions behind them, ensuring that each token corresponds one-to-one with a certain amount of physical gold and undergoes regular audits and off-chain reporting. The latter, such as Cache Gold and Digital Gold Token projects, attempts to enhance the verifiability and liquidity of tokens by binding programmable asset certificates with gold batch numbers.

Regardless of the approach taken, the core goal is to establish a mechanism for the credible representation, liquidity, and settlement of gold on the chain, thereby achieving real-time transferability, divisibility, and composability of gold assets, breaking the traditional gold market's fragmentation, high barriers to entry, and low liquidity.

The greatest value of tokenized gold is not just the progress of technical expression but its fundamental transformation of the gold market's functionality. In the traditional gold market, the trading of physical gold is usually accompanied by high transportation, insurance, and storage costs. Paper gold and ETFs, on the other hand, lack true ownership and on-chain composability. Tokenized gold attempts to provide a new form of gold that is divisible, real-time settled, and cross-border mobile through its on-chain native asset form, transforming this "static asset" into a "high liquidity + high transparency" dynamic financial instrument. This characteristic greatly expands the use cases of gold in DeFi and the global financial market, enabling it not only to serve as a value reserve but also to participate in multiple layers of financial activities such as collateral lending, leveraged trading, yield farming, and even cross-border clearing and settlement.

Furthermore, tokenized gold is driving a shift in the gold market from centralized to decentralized infrastructure. In the past, the value flow of gold heavily relied on traditional centralized nodes such as the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), clearing banks, and vault custody institutions, with issues of information asymmetry, cross-border delays, and high costs. Tokenized gold, with on-chain smart contracts as the carrier, has built a permissionless and trustless gold asset issuance and circulation system. It transparentizes and streamlines the traditional gold's entitlement, settlement, and custody processes, significantly lowering market entry barriers and allowing retail users and developers to equally access the global gold liquidity network.

Overall, tokenized gold represents a profound value reconstruction and system integration of traditional physical assets in the blockchain world. It not only inherits the safe-haven attributes and store-of-value functions of gold but also expands the functional boundaries of gold as a digital asset in the new financial system. Against the backdrop of global financial digitization and the multipolarization of currency systems, the on-chain reconstruction of gold is destined to be not a temporary experiment but a long-term process accompanying the evolution of financial sovereignty and technological paradigms. Whoever can establish a tokenized gold standard that combines compliance, liquidity, composability, and cross-border capabilities in this process may hold the discourse power of the future "on-chain hard currency."

IV. Analysis and Comparison of Mainstream Tokenized Gold Projects

In the current crypto-financial ecosystem, tokenized gold, as a bridge connecting the traditional precious metal market and the emerging on-chain asset system, has given birth to a number of representative projects. These projects explore from multiple dimensions such as technical architecture, custody mechanism, compliance path, and user experience, gradually building a market prototype of "on-chain gold." Although they all follow the basic principle of "physical gold collateral + on-chain mapping" in their core logic, their specific implementation paths and focuses are different, reflecting that the tokenized gold track is still in a stage of competition and undetermined standards.

The most representative tokenized gold projects currently include Tether Gold (XAUT), PAX Gold (PAXG), Cache Gold (CGT), Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT), and Aurus Gold (AWG), among others. Tether Gold and PAX Gold can be regarded as the current industry's duopoly, leading other projects in terms of market value and liquidity. They also enjoy a more advantageous position in user trust and exchange support due to their mature custody systems, higher transparency, and stronger brand endorsements.

Tether Gold (XAUT), launched by the stablecoin leader Tether, is characterized by its one-to-one anchor with the standard gold bars of the London gold market. Each XAUT corresponds to 1 ounce of physical gold custodied in Switzerland. The project relies on the Bitfinex ecosystem behind Tether, offering first-mover advantages in terms of liquidity, trading channels, and stability. However, Tether Gold is relatively conservative in terms of disclosure and transparency. Users cannot directly view the binding information of each token with specific gold bar numbers on the chain. This black-box asset custody approach is controversial in the decentralized crypto community. Additionally, XAUT's compliance layout is mainly aimed at international offshore users, and the entry barrier remains high for investors who wish to invest in tokenized gold through legitimate financial channels.

In contrast, PAX Gold (PAXG), launched by the licensed US fintech company Paxos, has gone further in terms of compliance and asset transparency. Each PAXG also represents 1 ounce of London standard gold, and through verifiable gold bar serial numbers and custody data, it provides users with on-chain queryable asset correspondence information. More importantly, Paxos, as a trust company regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), has its gold asset custody and issuance mechanism subject to regulatory scrutiny, which enhances the compliance endorsement of PAXG to a certain extent. The project has also actively expanded its DeFi compatibility and has been integrated into multiple DeFi protocols such as Aave and Uniswap. This allows PAXG to be used as collateral for lending and liquidity mining, thereby releasing the compound value of gold assets on the chain.

Cache Gold (CGT) represents another attempt at tokenized gold that leans more towards decentralization and verifiable asset certificates. The project uses a "Token Wrapper + gold bar number registration" system, with each CGT representing 1 gram of physical gold and being bound to the batch number of gold in an independent custody warehouse. Its biggest feature is the strong binding mechanism between on-chain and off-chain, that is, each gold collateral must generate a corresponding Proof of Reserve and record batch information and flow status on the blockchain. This mechanism allows users to more transparently track the physical assets behind the tokens. However, it also poses challenges for the project in terms of custody efficiency and liquidity organization, and it has not yet been widely promoted to mainstream DeFi scenarios.

Perth Mint Gold Token (PMGT) is the official tokenized gold product launched by the Perth Mint, a state-owned precious metal minting institution in Australia. The gold assets behind the project are guaranteed by the Australian government and custodied in a national vault, making it theoretically one of the most creditworthy tokenized gold projects. However, due to its low participation in the cryptocurrency market, scarce trading pairs, and lack of DeFi compatibility, the project, despite its high security and official endorsement, lags far behind Tether Gold and PAX Gold in terms of market liquidity and user popularity.

There are also innovative projects such as Aurus Gold (AWG) and Meld Gold, which attempt to build a new paradigm for tokenized gold through diversified custodians, NFT packaging, and cross-chain issuance. For example, Aurus Gold adopts a joint issuance by multiple mints and integrates with multiple exchanges and wallets to enhance the anti-centralization dependence of gold tokens. It also introduces NFTs as gold packaging certificates to provide flexibility in asset management. These projects are more in line with the Web3 native asset system in concept but are still in their early stages and have not yet established widespread market consensus.

Overall, the current tokenized gold market presents a bipolar pattern: on the one hand, there are "centralized + high-trust" projects represented by Tether Gold and PAX Gold, which quickly occupy the mainstream market share with the endorsement of large institutions, mature custody structures, and exchange access advantages; on the other hand, there are "decentralized + verifiable" projects represented by Cache Gold and Aurus Gold, which emphasize asset transparency and on-chain autonomy but are still limited in actual use by market acceptance, custody coordination efficiency, and DeFi integration levels. The competition between the two also reflects the ongoing博弈 between "trust threshold" and "technical ideal" in the entire crypto-financial ecosystem.

From the perspective of industry evolution, the future tokenized gold standard is likely to evolve towards a convergence of "compliance, verifiability, composability, and cross-chain capabilities." On the one hand, only assets that establish transparent custody systems in a strong regulatory environment and pass audits and on-chain verification can gain the long-term trust of mainstream institutions and users. On the other hand, projects must truly integrate into DeFi and Web3 infrastructure to achieve the "asset primitivization" of gold tokens. Otherwise, they will merely be "gold certificates in financial packaging," unable to release sufficient value and network effects.

V. Tokenized Gold from an Investor's Perspective: Value, Opportunities, and Risks

Tokenized gold, as an emerging financial instrument that combines traditional value anchoring with on-chain asset characteristics, is gradually becoming an alternative asset option in investors' portfolios. Unlike traditional gold ETFs or physical gold bars, its core value lies not only in the safe-haven attributes represented by gold itself but also in the enhanced liquidity, improved transaction convenience, and expanded composability achieved through the digitization of assets via blockchain infrastructure. From an investor's perspective, the appeal of tokenized gold lies in its ability to find a relatively balanced entry point between "financial stability anchor" and "technological innovation dividend," becoming a practical path to configuring "on-chain hard currency" in the highly volatile crypto market.

Firstly, tokenized gold naturally inherits the basic investment logic of gold as a global safe-haven asset. Historical experience shows that during cycles of increased macroeconomic uncertainty, intensified inflationary pressures, or rising geopolitical risks, gold typically receives a risk premium from the capital market, becoming the preferred target for institutions and individual investors to hedge against the depreciation of fiat currency

purchasing power and severe market fluctuations. Tokenized gold continues this attribute, especially during periods of violent crypto market fluctuations, providing investors with asset allocation opportunities that have low or even negative correlations. During several crypto market downturns in 2022 and 2023, the price fluctuations of tokens such as PAXG and XAUT were significantly smaller than those of mainstream crypto assets, and they even became a "short-term safe-haven port" for capital on the chain.

Secondly, tokenized gold endows gold assets with unprecedented liquidity and accessibility. Traditional gold investment has several pain points, including high transaction barriers, limited trading hours, inconvenient deposit and withdrawal, and strong geographical restrictions. In contrast, tokenized gold, as an ERC-20 or cross-chain asset, can be instantly transferred in any wallet that supports public chains worldwide and can also perform a variety of advanced financial operations such as high-frequency trading, DeFi staking, and cross-border settlement. This leap in liquidity greatly expands the operational space of gold assets, no longer confining them to the "asset storage" function but making them a dynamically manageable "on-chain cash flow base asset."

More importantly, with the gradual maturation of DeFi and Web3 infrastructure, tokenized gold is acquiring the financial attribute of composability, making it not just "digital gold" but gradually becoming a component module of on-chain native assets. Investors can obtain stablecoins by staking PAXG, thereby releasing liquidity to participate in other investment opportunities; they can also add gold assets to liquidity pools to earn income; or they can even transfer tokenized gold across chains through multi-chain interoperability protocols to serve global payment and settlement needs. This "asset-as-protocol" concept is an innovative path that cannot be realized in the traditional gold financial system.

However, despite its many advantages, tokenized gold still has certain structural risks and development bottlenecks that investors need to weigh carefully when participating. First is the custody and redemption risk. The vast majority of tokenized gold projects still rely on centralized physical custody systems, and investors must trust the issuer to properly store the gold and provide physical redemption when necessary. The redemption process for most projects is currently cumbersome, with high barriers to entry and geographical restrictions. Especially in extreme market conditions, whether users can successfully complete the exchange from on-chain assets to physical gold remains uncertain in terms of law and operations. In addition, some projects lack sufficient information disclosure in terms of custody audits and asset proof, and this lack of transparency can reduce user confidence and is not conducive to its long-term construction as an "on-chain safe-haven anchor."

Second is the external risk of compliance and regulation. Since gold itself is a high-value sensitive asset, its tokenization process involves multiple regulatory requirements such as the precious metal market, securities law, and KYC/AML. The legality and regulatory path of tokenized gold are not unified across different jurisdictions, which means that the legal risks faced by projects have a high degree of uncertainty. Especially for institutional users who wish to use this type of asset for cross-border settlement or large transactions, how to operate steadily within the compliance framework is a key factor in determining their acceptance.

Finally, from a market game theory perspective, the status of tokenized gold in an actual investment portfolio is still in an "auxiliary configuration" role and is unlikely to become a dominant asset. Although its safe-haven and stability characteristics have significant value in downturn cycles, its performance in a bull market is often inferior to that of riskier crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. This "stable value but limited growth" characteristic makes tokenized gold more suitable as a tool for hedging volatility and stabilizing portfolio returns, rather than a core investment target for pursuing high growth.

Overall, for investors, tokenized gold is both a "value storage tool" for a new type of asset and a configuration option prioritizing "security" in the digital economy. Its underlying logic is built on the millennia of stable value of gold, reshaping its trading, custody, and composability through blockchain technology. As the DeFi ecosystem further develops, cross-chain infrastructure improves, and compliance paths become clearer, tokenized gold may play a more important role in the "full lifecycle management of digital assets." For individual users, it is a practical path to enhancing asset risk resistance and engaging in countercyclical configuration. For institutions, it may become a "core asset" in building on-chain portfolios, thereby ushering in a new era of "on-chain asset management" in the true sense.

VI. Conclusion: The On-Chain Upgrade of Gold Is Not a Replacement but a Continuation

In an era of unstable credit, increased volatility of the US dollar, and reshaping of the global monetary landscape, gold is undergoing a process of "digital rediscovery." It is not being replaced by digital assets such as Bitcoin but is being tokenized, programmable, and smart-contracted, thereby participating more flexibly in the construction of the new financial system. For users, this evolved gold remains "hard currency," just in a different on-chain form. It still provides a sense of security, value preservation, and risk resistance, becoming a true "stability anchor" in the digital world.