As traditional and digital markets reel from escalating trade tensions, gold-backed cryptocurrencies are quietly emerging as a resilient safe haven — outperforming much of the crypto market since President Donald Trump’s second-term inauguration on Jan. 20, according to a new report by CEX.IO.
On Wednesday, the market capitalization of tokenized gold surged to just under $2 billion, a 5.7% jump in just 24 hours, data from CoinGecko shows. The move followed a spike in spot gold prices, which briefly hit a new all-time high of $3,170 per ounce, according to TradingView.
Amid the broader crypto pullback, tokenized gold has remained in demand. Weekly trading volume for these digital assets crossed the $1 billion threshold — a level not seen since the U.S. banking panic of March 2023 — the CEX.IO report noted.
Leading the surge were Paxos Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT), which collectively dominate the tokenized gold space. Since Trump’s return to office, PAXG’s weekly trading volume has skyrocketed over 900%, while XAUT posted a 300% increase. PAXG alone recorded $63 million in net inflows during that time, based on data from DeFiLlama.
The upswing in digital gold mirrors broader strength in the physical gold market this year, which has seen double-digit gains thanks to inflation fears and geopolitical stress. Even so, gold wasn’t immune to Thursday’s volatility, briefly falling 6% before rebounding to fresh record highs.
CEX.IO noted that tokenized gold has emerged as one of the strongest-performing segments of the crypto sector in 2025, gaining 21% in total market cap since January. Stablecoins rose by 8%, while bitcoin has dropped 19%, and the overall crypto market shed 26%.
“Tokenized gold is becoming a go-to diversification tool for crypto-native investors,” said Alexandr Kerya, VP of Product Management at CEX.IO. “It allows users to stay within the digital ecosystem while benefiting from the intrinsic value and relative stability of gold.”
Kerya also emphasized how real-world asset (RWA) tokenization trends are drawing new users to gold-backed tokens: “The broader RWA narrative is making gold exposure more intuitive and accessible, even for users who previously overlooked it.”
