Gold’s remarkable performance in 2026 has fuelled the rapid rise of tokenised gold protocols, which have been the top performers since the start of the year.
Gold has consistently broken records this year. It hit an all-time high of $5,417 per ounce at the end of January, and while it fell amid a wipeout in leveraged metals bets, it has traded above $5,000 over the past week.
Political chaos — including US tariffs and a potential invasion of Iran — has fuelled the rally, according to experts.
Tether Gold has grown 62%, to $3.7 billion, since January 1, according to DefiLlama data. Paxos Gold has grown 48%, to $2.4 billion.
Moreover, Ondo Finance and Securitize, two broader tokenisation platforms, have also experienced double-digit growth.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, has completely reversed the gains it enjoyed in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024. The global crypto market has fallen more than 21% since January 1, according to CoinGecko.
In fact, of the top 20 protocols in decentralised finance, only one other has seen any growth to begin the year — Ethena, the issuer of USDe, a token it calls a “synthetic dollar.”
While some of those flagging protocols have grown in crypto terms, the dollar value of their users’ deposits has dropped steeply. The top performer, Sky, has seen the dollar value of its deposits fall 5%, and Aave, the largest protocol in DeFi, has seen its deposits fall more than 19%.
The tokenised gold case
Tokenised gold has its own appeal.
South Korean investors have been snapping up gold-pegged stablecoins as part of a bid to avoid hefty tax bills.
That’s because crypto trading, unlike gold, is not yet subject to any form of taxation in South Korea. Tokenised gold products let South Korean investors gain exposure to the soaring metal without the hefty taxes that come with buying the real thing.
Gold-backed tokens are tradeable digital assets pegged to the value of physical gold. In most cases, one token represents a troy ounce, or a gram, of physical gold. Tether and other companies back their coins with physical gold held in secure, audited vaults.
Even smaller tokenised gold players have enjoyed the boom.
Pleasing Gold, with a market capitalisation of $102 million, has grown 21% since the beginning of the year, according to data from RWA.xyz. Matrixdock Gold has grown 23%, to more than $69 million.
