Gold Goes Gaga: Tokenized Treasure Tops $2.5B! 💰✨

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Markets

What ho, old sport:

  • The so-called “tokenized gold” market, a modern folly if ever there was one, has ballooned to a preposterous $2.57 billion, led by Tether’s XAUT and Paxos’ PAXG, according to the ever-reliable CoinGecko. 🤑
  • This absurd growth is apparently driven by a $437 million XAUT token minting in August, while PAXG has attracted $141.5 million in inflows since June, as Defillama so kindly informs us. 📈
  • Gold, that ancient refuge of the panic-stricken, is nigh on breaking its April high, with the so-called “safe haven” demand driving inflows into these gold-backed tokens. 🛡️

As the price of gold teeters on the brink of surpassing its April peak, the market size of these crypto tokens, backed by the precious metal, has already reached ludicrous new heights. One can only marvel at the ingenuity of these financial wizards. 🧙♂️

The overall market capitalization of this tokenized gold nonsense has topped $2.57 billion, CoinGecko reveals, with Tether’s XAUT and Paxos’ PAXG tokens leading the charge. Both are ostensibly designed to track the price of gold and are backed by physical bars languishing in some vault or other. 🏦

XAUT, issued by the same firm behind the USDT stablecoin, saw a $437 million leap in its supply to a record $1.3 billion, per CoinGecko. Tether’s Treasury, in a fit of exuberance, minted 129,000 tokens in early August on the Ethereum network, as Etherscan so dutifully records. 📜

PAXG, the gold-backed token of the U.S.-based stablecoin firm Paxos, has swelled to a record market size of $983 million, DefiLlama data shows. This has been fueled by $141.5 million in net inflows since June, a testament to the boundless optimism of the investing class. 🎉

Gold is currently trading at around $3,470, just shy of the April 22 peak achieved amidst the tariff tantrum. One can only imagine the champagne corks popping in the boardrooms of these financial innovators. 🥂

The precious metal, widely regarded as a safe haven during times of uncertainty, has been resurging lately, driven by a steepening U.S. Treasury yield curve. How quaintly reassuring it all seems, until the next crisis, of course. 🤔

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2025-09-02 00:12