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The rise in gold prices since the beginning of the year has exceeded 70%, surpassing the $4.5 thousand per ounce mark for the first time in history. Gold, as a traditional asset for protection against economic shocks, has outperformed almost all asset classes, including Bitcoin. Along with the metal, the sector of the crypto market based on physical gold is also growing, reaching a record capitalization of $4.2 billion.
As of December 23, 14:40 Moscow time, the price of gold was about $4.49 thousand, according to TradingView. At one point, the price exceeded $4.5 thousand for the first time in history. The growth since the beginning of the year is over 70%. These same record levels were also reached by stable tokens based on gold, backed by physical metal, such as PAXG from Paxos and XAUT from Tether.
Over the same period, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ indices grew by 17% and 21%, respectively. The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the US currency against a basket of six other major currencies—the euro, yen, pound sterling, Canadian dollar, Swedish krona, and Swiss franc—fell by 10%.
At the same time, the crypto market fell by almost 10% below the $3 trillion total capitalization mark, and the price of Bitcoin decreased by about 7%. But the sector of "gold" stablecoins showed huge growth.
According to The Block data as of December 23, the total capitalization of the sector reached almost $4.2 billion, which is more than three times the values on January 1. Just two assets—PAXG and XAUT—accounted for almost 90% of the share, with figures of $1.53 billion and $2.26 billion, respectively.
Starting from August, the capitalization of these tokens has doubled and almost tripled, respectively, significantly outpacing the price dynamics. This may indicate that in 2025, there was demand for the issuance of new "gold" tokens.
Along with this sector, tokenized shares of gold-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) also received a relatively small impulse. That is, assets pegged not to the dollar, but to the shares of funds buying the precious metal.
One such instrument has become ETF tokens on the blockchain, for example, Gold tokenized ETF from xStock or iShares Gold Trust Tokenized ETF from Ondo; the capitalization of such tokens amounts to several tens of millions. This is a small amount compared to options like XAUT and PAXG, but in the middle of the summer, such instruments were not on the market at all.
Theoretically, such options give crypto investors who want to trade on the blockchain market access to assets like gold or shares of funds buying gold. However, this market remains niche, and trading volumes amount to several million per day, which could potentially complicate trading operations with them.
At the end of June, several offers for trading shares of traditional companies on crypto platforms appeared on the market. Exchanges Kraken, Bybit, as well as decentralized platforms on the Solana blockchain added a solution from Backed Finance, called xStocks, with the ability to trade shares of Apple, Microsoft, S&P 500, and other companies, including funds.
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