Markets have put more gold on blockchains, and the shift has been rapid. The tokenized commodities sector grew about 53% in under six weeks, pushing its size to just over $6 billion. That jump has been led by a small group of gold tokens, and the move has traders and some big banks watching closely.
Most of the fresh value sits in the XAU token and Paxos’s PAXG, together holding close to $6 billion of the sector’s market worth. Investors are treating these tokens as a quick way to own a claim on bullion without needing to move bars or deal with vault paperwork. Some buyers want a safe haven that moves easily across borders and others want to trade fractions of an ounce in online markets.
Tether has moved toward physical integration, with reports that the company took a $150 million stake in Gold.com to fold the XAU token into that platform and to let customers pay for actual gold with stablecoins. This is a step toward tying token balances more directly to physical holdings and sales channels, which could allow retail buyers to use familiar crypto tools to buy and collect real metal. Analysts see big upside: Geoffrey Kendrick of Standard Chartered sketches a growth path from roughly $35 billion in tokenized real-world assets today to as much as $2 trillion by 2028, while Alvin Foo argues that tokenized commodities—gold on public chains in particular—could scale to trillion-dollar values someday as markets adopt fractional ownership and new trading rails. Those projections require many pieces to fall into place: clear rules, reliable custody proofs, and wide demand from non-crypto investors, but stablecoin liquidity and DeFi plumbing are cited as infrastructure capable of supporting larger markets.
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