BTCC closed 2025 with $5.72 billion in tokenized gold trades, driven by a dramatic fourth-quarter surge that produced $2.74 billion of volume alone. This concentration of activity reflected a rapid shift in demand toward gold represented on-chain, according to the exchange’s Growth Report for Q4 2025.
BTCC’s quarterly figures showed a steep acceleration through 2025. Q1 registered $301.4 million; Q2 rose to $1.50 billion; Q3 produced $1.19 billion; and Q4 delivered $2.74 billion, an 809% increase over Q1. The $5.72 billion total represented roughly 10.7% of the exchange’s $53.1 billion in tokenized RWA futures volume for the year, underlining tokenized gold’s outsized contribution to RWA growth.
Those figures coincided with a $775 billion total trading volume across all asset classes on BTCC in 2025. The concentration of tokenized gold in Q4 both lifted annual totals and shifted the internal mix of traded products on the exchange.
Market drivers and implications
BTCC attributed the acceleration to a blend of macro and product factors. Higher nominal gold prices, elevated geopolitical and policy uncertainty, and a discernible institutional tilt toward tangible RWAs supported demand for blockchain-based gold exposure. The exchange offered multiple tokenized gold instruments—spot-linked and issuer‑backed tokens—allowing traders and hedgers to choose exposure with different custody and backing profiles.
Operationally, the surge raises practical questions for liquidity management and settlement. Concentrated quarterly flows increase the importance of prime-broker relationships, custody transparency and attestation practices to prevent basis risk between on-chain tokens and physical gold holdings
. BTCC’s report implied those elements were central to scaling tokenized commodities without widening discounts or premiums to NAV.
For market participants, the 2025 outcome signals that tokenized commodities can capture rapid pockets of demand but also that such growth concentrates execution and counterparty risk in short windows. Traders and institutional allocators will watch whether liquidity normalizes across quarters and how price discovery behaves when tokenized metals represent a higher share of RWA activity.
Investors and custodians are now likely to monitor early 2026 trading and any additional attestation or reserve disclosures from token issuers, which will test whether the Q4 momentum translates into sustained structural adoption or a volatile, quarter‑driven cycle for tokenized gold.
