Tokenised gold continued its rally on Saturday while the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum slid after the US and Israel bombed Iran.
Investors this week piled into Tether Gold and Paxos Gold over tensions in the Middle East. Both assets continued to surge following the unprecedented attack on Iran.
Tether Gold — XAUT — jumped as high as $5,455 on Saturday morning in New York. It then dropped slightly and was recently trading for $5,332, about 5% below the all-time high it notched in February and up 2% over the past day.
Paxos’ PAXG was up nearly 4% to hit $5,438, according to CoinGecko. It rose nearly as high as $5,536 before dipping slightly.
Geopolitical headwinds
The two tokenised assets — which trade on a number of different crypto networks — surged as Bitcoin fell. The leading cryptocurrency traded as low as $63,177 at one point on Saturday.
Ethereum, too, dropped sharply on news that the US had hit Iran. Major cryptocurrencies have typically experienced volatility on news of geopolitical strife.
But the rise of tokenised gold shows that crypto is still proving useful for investors wanting fast exposure to blockchain-based precious metals.
The total value locked of PAXG and XAUT has surged this year, DefiLama data shows, as the price of gold spot market has attracted more investors.
Stablecoin giant Tether, which issues USDT, the most-traded cryptocurrency, has been fast accumulating gold and is now one of the world’s largest holders of the precious metal.
Tether in January said that “digital-native demand for safe-haven assets that remain fully onchain” was spurring the growth of its XAUT product.
Bitcoin as a safe-haven?
Bitcoin has in the past been touted as a safe-haven asset, and has in previous years been correlated — albeit briefly — with gold.
Last year, Bitcoin was sold as part of the debasement trade with precious metals: an asset investors could use to protect themselves against the devaluation of fiat currencies.
But that narrative has been rattled since October when crypto markets experienced a shock selloff.
Bitcoin and Ethereum have struggled to regain ground and are now trading well below their all-time highs since the biggest liquidation event in the history of crypto wiped billions of dollars off their market value.
Gold, meanwhile, has continued to notch new highs in 2026.
