When U.S. futures markets shut for the weekend, gold pricing shifts onto blockchain platforms, according to Iggy Ioppe, former Credit Suisse CIO and now chief investment officer at liquidity infrastructure firm Theo. CME Group’s gold futures cease trading at 5:00 p.m. ET Friday and do not resume until 6:00 p.m. ET Sunday. During that gap, regulated futures are largely dormant and much of the market activity that continues in Asia is private over-the-counter business that isn’t publicly reported.
That leaves tokenized gold tokens such as PAXG and XAUT among the few continuously traded, publicly visible instruments that reference physical bullion. “In terms of publicly visible price formation, onchain markets are responsible for virtually 100% of weekend price discovery,” Ioppe told Cointelegraph, noting that price moves on-chain are frequently reflected when the CME reopens.
The shift to on-chain weekend price discovery has coincided with rapid growth in tokenized gold. Over the past year the category expanded by roughly $2.8 billion, from about $1.6 billion to $4.4 billion in market capitalization — a roughly 177% increase that outpaced broader gold-market gains and most major spot-gold ETFs. Holder counts nearly tripled, adding more than 115,000 wallets, and tokenized gold represented about one-quarter of net inflows into the real-world asset (RWA) class, outpacing the combined growth of tokenized stocks, corporate bonds and non-U.S. Treasuries.
Trading activity has surged as well. Tokenized gold recorded approximately $178 billion in trading volume in 2025 and peaked above $126 billion in the fourth quarter alone. That level of activity would rank tokenized gold as the second-largest gold investment product by volume globally, behind only SPDR Gold Shares. Market makers and cross-venue liquidity providers dominate participation, arbitraging price differences between digital venues and traditional markets. Crypto-native macro traders also use tokenized gold for bullion exposure, as collateral, and in hedging and yield strategies when geopolitical or macroeconomic uncertainty rises.
“Some institutions are monitoring weekend onchain gold markets, particularly macro and cross-asset desks that track gap risk ahead of the CME reopen,” Ioppe said, adding that most treat these on-chain signals as informational rather than as a trigger for active positioning.
Continuous 24/7 trading provides a practical risk-management benefit: if a geopolitical shock occurs while futures are closed, tokenized markets allow immediate rebalancing rather than forcing traders to wait for the market to reopen. One example cited by market data: tokenized gold rallied during a Saturday escalation in Middle East tensions after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, even as Bitcoin and Ether fell. CoinMarketCap data showed XAUT briefly above $5,450 and PAXG nearing $5,536 before both trimmed gains.
Adoption hurdles remain. Liquidity for tokenized gold, while growing, is still smaller than in the futures or ETF markets, so large orders can move prices. Regulatory clarity is improving but uneven; fragmentation across jurisdictions, and divergent custody, accounting and capital rules, slow broader institutional deployment.
For the foreseeable future, tokenized gold is expected to operate alongside traditional products rather than replace them. “The most likely near-term evolution is that of tokenized and traditional markets existing in parallel, each serving a different function,” Ioppe concluded.
This article was produced under Cointelegraph’s editorial standards; readers are encouraged to independently verify the information presented.