2 Gold-Backed Crypto Asset Market Caps Near $1 Billion, XAUT Jumps 19,000% in 23 Months

DApp Nov 23, 2022 0 94 Add to Reading List

While reserve-backed crypto assets and stablecoin market valuations increased a great deal during the last year, gold-backed cryptocurrencies have also seen their market caps swell. Between the tokens tether gold and pax gold, the market valuations of these two gold cryptos are nearing a billion dollars in value with $742 million today.

Tether Gold’s Market Cap Swells Over 19,000% in Less Than 2 Years, While Pax Gold Increased by More Than 15,000%

On February 21, 2020, the market valuation of tether gold (XAUT) was $2.1 million and 23 months later, the valuation has increased by 19,423% to $410 million. Since March 24, 2020, or 672 days ago, pax gold (PAXG) has seen its market cap grow from $2.2 million to today’s $332.7 million. The increase the gold-backed crypto token PAXG saw over the last 22 months was around 15,022%.

XAUT/USD on Bitfinex on January 25, 2022, daily chart.

Both projects claim to be backed by one ounce of .999 fine gold which means XAUT’s vaults should hold 223,921 ounces of fine gold. PAXG’s reserves should be around 181,321 ounces of the precious metal.

According to PAXG specifications, the token is backed by one fine troy ounce of a London Good Delivery gold bar. While both gold-backed tokens have seen significant market cap increases over the last two years, trade volume is light. XAUT’s trade volume on January 25 is $1.5 million while PAXG has $16.1 million in 24-hour trades.

PAXG/USD on Kraken on January 25, 2022, daily chart.

Tether gold only has three major trading pairs which include tether (USDT) with 66.92% of all trades today, USD with 26.69%, and BTC with 6.39% of today’s XAUT swaps. Data shows that Bitfinex and FTX are the most active XAUT exchanges.

Pax gold has a lot more trading pairs with USDT capturing most of the PAXG swaps with 46.70% of today’s PAXG trades. This is followed by BTC (20.27%), USD (12.52%), WETH (8.13%), EUR (7.19%), and ETH (3.22%). Binance is PAXG’s most active exchange followed by Kucoin and Crypto.com.

PMGT and DGX Market Valuations Are Much Smaller Than Competitors

In addition to XAUT and PAXG, the gold-backed tokens perth mint gold token (PMGT) and digix gold (DGX) both have market caps above $1 million each. PMGT has a $1.7 million market capitalization and DGX has $1.1 million today. 100% of PMGT trades are settled in AUD via the Independent Reserve, while a large portion of DGX swaps are settled in the Indonesian rupiah (IDR) via the exchange Indodax.

While PMGT is also backed by one troy fine ounce of physical gold like XAUT and PAXG, DGX tokens are backed by a gram of LBMA (the London Bullion Market Association) gold. According to the Digixdao team, the assets are stored in a safe house located in Singapore.

PMGT and DGX have not seen the growth XAUT and PAXG have seen. On March 12, 2020, PMGT had a market valuation of $177,205 and since then it’s increased 859%. DGX had a market valuation of $1.2 million in May 2018, and today the valuation is roughly the same.