Gold has rebounded to around $5,000.

Starting from January 2025, gold prices broke through the significant thresholds of $3,000, $4,000, and $4,500 successively, and surged to $5,600 in early 2026, outperforming most asset classes globally within half a month. However, the narrative driving the rapid rise in gold prices is beginning to loosen—speculation about higher rates being maintained for longer has been triggered by the policy orientation of the new Federal Reserve Chair; the potential strengthening of the dollar and U.S. Treasury yields poses direct pressure on non-yielding gold; and the short-term easing of geopolitical risks has weakened some safe-haven demand, shifting market sentiment from greed to caution.

Will gold continue to rise? Should we keep buying? From a long-term perspective, the core logic driving the rise of gold has not dissipated. The trend of de-dollarization and diversification of central bank foreign exchange reserves continues to deepen, with central banks around the world (especially in emerging markets) consistently net increasing their gold holdings for several years, forming a solid structural demand for gold prices. High global debt, fragmented geopolitical patterns, and future economic uncertainties continue to highlight gold's ultimate safe-haven attributes and value anchoring functions.

Looking back at the gold bull markets of the late 1970s or post-2008, there were significant corrections of more than 20% along the way, but these corrections ultimately became "fuel stations" in the bull markets rather than endpoints. In genuine strong cycles, sharp declines often release risks within a short time frame, purging weak positions, and then reorganizing under stronger long-term buying pressure to reach new highs.

Gold is still worth buying, but the experience of buying gold remains stuck in the last century.

Why put gold on the blockchain?

Traditional physical gold investment often involves a long and "heavy" chain, where investors typically have to navigate a series of cumbersome steps: visiting compliant institutions to purchase, paying the full amount, arranging high-risk physical transport themselves, and finally ensuring safe storage through purchasing safes or renting bank safety deposit boxes.

This model clearly has enormous room for improvement. First, the business hours of the physical market limit the flexibility of trading and cannot cover the 24-hour continuous fluctuations of global gold prices; second, the custody and delivery of physical gold not only involve complex and time-consuming processes, but also come with rigid storage and insurance costs; furthermore, traditional gold bars are difficult to divide, and the higher investment threshold keeps many small investors with fragmented allocation needs out. In addition, the records of traditional offline transactions have weaker traceability, insufficient transparency, and the risks of settlement delays and counterparty credit risk remain ongoing hidden dangers.

To address the challenges of liquidity and custody for physical gold, products like gold ETFs offer efficient trading tools through securitization. Now, tokenized gold products like XAUt leverage blockchain technology to further expand the boundaries of digital gold. Compared to gold ETFs, tokenized gold achieves on-chain native programmability, 24/7 global circulation, and almost infinite divisibility; these features allow it to integrate more flexibly into scenarios like DeFi. It should be noted that tokenized gold is not a substitute for traditional tools, but rather offers a complementary new generation option in aspects of programmability, round-the-clock liquidity, and subdivided usage.

Core Differences Comparison Table: Tokenized Gold vs. Traditional Physical Gold and Gold ETF

Unlike traditional ETFs, gold tokens are not merely securities-based price certificates, but are strict 1:1 ownership proof corresponding to physical gold on-chain. This means that token holders are not just speculating on price fluctuations; they truly own the gold in the vault, and under certain conditions, investors can even withdraw physical gold directly, which is something most ETFs cannot do. The more critical breakthrough lies in "activation": traditional gold sits inert in the vault, but gold tokens can move on the blockchain; they can access the DeFi ecology to generate interest through collateral, loans, etc., transforming gold from a static store of value asset to a "living asset" with income-generating capabilities.

Ultimately, the core value of gold tokenization perfectly resolves the contradiction between holding physical gold, liquidity, and financialization. In the past, investors faced a multiple-choice question: either buy physical gold and endure the hassle of custody, or buy ETFs and give up direct control over the assets. Gold tokenization opens a third path: investors can enjoy the security of holding physical gold while also obtaining financial returns and better liquidity through blockchain networks. For high-net-worth individuals who value asset security and seek capital efficiency, this model that balances the "physical base" and "digital returns" is the optimal solution for future asset allocation.

Traditional Financial Choices

Tokenized gold is not a one-sided celebration of the crypto industry, but rather a result of the traditional gold industry's proactive digital transformation.

LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) officially launched the Gold Bar Integrity (GBI) Database in January 2025. Utilizing blockchain technology, LBMA has achieved full lifecycle traceability of gold bars from mining, refining to vault circulation. By December 2025, all refineries on the eligible delivery list will have signed up. This transformation marks the shift of the underlying logic of the global physical gold market from "paper certificates" to "digital fingerprints," providing undeniable physical quantification support for the large-scale tokenization of gold.

Mainstream banks are also joining the game. In London, HSBC has utilized distributed ledger technology to achieve the granularity of physical gold in the vault, transforming heavy gold bars into instantly tradable digital certificates; in Singapore, DBS Bank and Standard Chartered are piloting cross-border settlements based on tokenized gold through their platforms like Libeara. By using smart contracts, banks can instantly convert gold assets into trading collateral, compressing the cross-border clearing time from days to minutes, fundamentally restructuring the efficiency of gold as a global liquidity medium.

This series of facts proves that the ecological infrastructure for tokenized gold has matured. It is no longer just a concept but a mature tool connecting traditional finance and digital markets. Currently, global gold pricing power remains primarily concentrated in London and New York, but under the larger trend of "Western gold moving East," the Asian market, as a major consumer center for physical gold, is leveraging digital means to seek "curve overtaking". Tokenization of gold is one of the engines accelerating this process.

How to acquire "Tokenized Gold"?

In this grand context, the compliant virtual asset market in Hong Kong has taken a substantial step forward. According to official disclosures from HashKey Holdings Limited (3887.HK), the first licensed retail virtual asset exchange in Hong Kong, HashKey Exchange, has launched Tether Gold (XAUt). Currently, professional investors can conduct trades directly through HashKey Exchange's over-the-counter trading (OTC) and wealth management channel interface.

Now, through the compliant hub of HashKey Exchange, investors can achieve seamless conversion of fiat currency, stablecoins, and gold assets without straying from the regulatory framework. Against the backdrop of limited trading hours in traditional financial markets, gold tokens that support 24/7 trading provide the market with a more flexible response to macro events and a more efficient asset allocation path. Through the tokenization method, gold can expand from a physical-held and long-term stored asset form into an asset that can flow and be used within the digital financial system, reducing configuration friction costs, while its custody and trading security significantly improved thanks to HashKey's licensed system.

HashKey Exchange's wealth management channel is committed to building a diversified asset allocation matrix within a secure and transparent regulatory framework. Currently, this channel has successfully covered core investment varieties such as money market funds (MMF) and commodities, and is continuously accelerating the on-chain process of quality assets.

The deeper significance lies in the fact that these products respond to Hong Kong's policy ambitions to promote RWA. It not only provides a standardized secure model for on-chain traditional assets but also guides a new investment paradigm—enabling investors to enjoy the trading convenience brought by digital finance without worrying about compliance or underlying clearing in extreme market conditions. For investors pursuing asset stability and efficiency, choosing this kind of compliant tokenized gold aligns with the trend of digital transformation in Asia and represents the optimal path to achieve asset returns in times of volatility.

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