Tokenized gold recorded a dramatic expansion in 2025, with market capitalization rising 177% from roughly $1.6 billion to $4.4 billion and contributing about $2.8 billion in net value to the real‑world asset (RWA) market.
Tokenized gold’s 177% market‑cap increase — from approximately $1.6 billion to $4.4 billion — injected nearly $2.8 billion into the RWA pool over the year. That contribution accounted for a quarter of the RWA sector’s net growth in 2025, according to compilation of industry market trackers and sector analyses.
Trading volume amplified the effect. Tokenized gold reached about $178 billion in on‑chain turnover in 2025, outpacing traditional gold ETFs in reported activity. Market participants cited the round‑the‑clock tradability and instant settlement characteristics of blockchain wrappers as factors that made tokenized gold attractive during a period of market uncertainty and a broad search for yield.
Prominent tokens such as XAUT and PAXG were singled out in industry coverage as principal contributors to both liquidity and market‑cap growth. Their scale helped move tokenized gold from a niche product toward instruments used for global, digital hedging and portfolio access.
The surge coincided with elevated trading activity — tokenized gold posted about $178 billion in trading volume in 2025, surpassing leading gold ETFs — a shift driven largely by major products such as Tether Gold (XAUT) and Paxos Gold (PAXG).
RWA context, concentration and forecasts
Tokenized gold’s performance came amid a rapid expansion of the on‑chain RWA market. Industry reports placed the RWA market at roughly $24 billion by june, reflecting a multi‑hundred percent increase in the year. On‑chain RWA value rose by about $7.5 billion in 2025, matching prior‑year gains and signaling broad momentum across asset classes such as bonds and commodities.
Analyses noted that tokenized commodities overall added more than $547 million in market cap in 2025, with gold‑backed tokens accounting for nearly 98% of that commodity growth. Longer‑range forecasts cited by market commentators include a McKinsey scenario in which tokenized RWAs could expand to about $2 trillion by 2030 — approximately 10% of global GDP in that projection — underscoring why observers treated 2025 as an inflection year for asset tokenization.
Investors and infrastructure providers will now test whether the liquidity and price discovery seen in 2025 persist under stress and across market cycles. Attention will focus on how tokenized gold products integrate with custody, settlement rails and compliance frameworks in the coming quarters, and whether that integration sustains the asset class’s role as a digital access point to traditional safe‑haven exposure.
