Why Tokenized Gold Still Can't Compete With Dollar Stablecoins

Tokenized gold reached a $6 billion market capitalization in February 2026, yet it remains significantly outperformed by dollar-pegged stablecoins, which settled over $33 trillion on-chain in 2025. While gold benefits from strong macro tailwinds like central bank hoarding and geopolitical instability, its on-chain adoption is constrained by physical logistics rather than blockchain technology. Unlike stablecoins backed by liquid T-bills and cash, tokenized gold requires the acquisition, shipping, and vaulting of physical London Good Delivery bars. Paxos Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) dominate the sector, accounting for approximately 96–97% of the market, yet they face inherent frictions regarding jurisdictional custody and audit cadences. Scaling this asset class to $50 billion would necessitate moving roughly 325 tonnes of metal into specialized vaults, creating a physical bottleneck that stablecoins do not encounter. Furthermore, the liquidity gap between these assets is stark, with USDT daily trading volumes often exceeding $100 billion compared to the low hundreds of millions for tokenized gold. Ultimately, the reliance on physical infrastructure and periodic attestations prevents tokenized gold from achieving the same level of composability and real-time verifiability as dollar-based stablecoins.