Gold & The Digital Asset-Space Are Increasingly Interlinked; Goldman

A volatile 'risk-off' week saw Bitcoin test $62.5k before $787m of weekly net ETF inflows accompanied a mid-week reversal.

Notably, crypto markets demonstrated absorption capacity over the weekend as geopolitical headlines emerged, with spot prices recovering most of the initial selloff despite thin liquidity.

However, cautious positioning remains evident in derivatives markets.

More traditional safe-haven assets like the USDollar and, in particular, Gold, performed well, extending its move from ~$5260 to above $5400 (+~3%) into Monday before plunging back down to $5000 on Tuesday before finding support.

But overall, since the geopolitical events began, 'digital gold' has oputperformed the barbarous relic (for a change)...

Bitcoin’s ‘digital gold’ label has been around for years. However, as Goldman's crypto research team notes, it has recently been gaining attention on the back of BTC and gold price diverging.

Whilst market commentators have been increasingly debating the validity of this label, gold and the digital asset space have become interlinked in other ways –

• The tokenized gold market has notably (Figure 5) grown in size, together with associated spot and perpetual futures trading activity, and has additionally unlocked gold’s potential use as collateral across crypto protocols (Harvey, Campbell R. and Lin, Chen and Rabetti, Daniel and Zhang, Che)

• Stablecoin issuers have become active purchasers of physical gold 

• Gold backed digital tokens aim to capture opportunities including: expanding accessibility, tokens make it possible for investors to purchase fractional amounts potentially lowering the entry barrier and enabling a wider range of participants to gain gold exposure; more flexible custodial arrangements, the ease of holding gold or the exposure to gold improves as compared to investing in spot gold; and -as with all tokenised asset potential- potentially enabling greater multi-asset mobility, tokenisation of gold could allow free usage as collateral without traditional limitations such as storage. 

• Gold-backed tokens are not without their hurdles and risks. A leading challenge is integrating physical and digital worlds, especially securing and storing metal or stone. Today’s model relies heavily on custodians’ safekeeping and auditors verifying reserves, potentially creating concentration risk. Due to operational challenges, not all gold-backed token providers offer physical redemption. Fractional ownership is possible, but physical redemption depends on the issuer. Gold-backed tokens’ continuous, 24/7 nature can cause price dislocations when integrated with conventional markets, which operate only Monday through Friday. Additionally, there is continued regulatory uncertainty on the treatment and issuer obligations which may inhibit opportunities in this space (WEF).

• New tokenized gold-linked products, including ETFs, are starting to come to market

As these products gain traction, the aggregate total market cap of the top tokenized gold tokens is estimated to sit at the $6-7b mark (Coinmetrics). 

BTC and digital gold thesis

BTC’s price performance relative to gold has put the “digital gold” narrative to test – since the start of the year, the two asset classes have diverged, with BTC moving 24.4% lower whilst gold is 22.1% higher YTD (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Where is gold trading relative to Bitcoin?

Source: Goldman Sachs

This has brought the BTC/gold ratio to 0.41, the lowest it has been since 2023 (Figure 2). 

Figure 2: What is the BTC to gold ratio with 3M rolling average?

Source: Goldman Sachs

On a longer lookback, bitcoin has reached its all-time high in October last year at $125,500 on the back of positive US regulatory tailwinds, spot demand from BTC ETFs and digital asset treasuries (among others). Since then, Bitcoin has retraced 50%, which first started as a market correction and a crypto-centric liquidation cascade from which crypto currencies have not recovered. At the same time, gold has made new all-time highs throughout January of this year. As a result, bitcoin’s realized correlation to gold has oscillated in the low 0.1-0.4 range, but has been negative on several occasions last year.  Only recently was there an uptick in realized correlation as both assets moved lower in tandem at the end of Jan this year (Figure 3).

Figure 3: What is BTC & ETH 90-day correlation to gold?

Source: Goldman Sachs

Since US spot BTC ETFs first came into the market in 2024, there has been an inverse relationship between inflows into Gold and Bitcoin ETFs (Figure 4), which has only recently broken down too (with both showing outflows in line with recent price action).

Figure 4: 90-day change in ETF inflows in USD for Gold and Bitcoin ETF (GLD US Equity and IBIT US Equity)

Source: Goldman Sachs

Gold tokenization

Tokenization of gold is not a recent trend, but the activity associated with tokenized gold has been picking up (Figure 5).  Tokenized gold intends to replicate the ownership of physical gold, leveraging blockchain protocols for its digital on-chain record, transfer, settlement and custody. Estimates suggest that the tokenized gold market, approximated by the top tokens, has now reached over $6b in market cap (Coinmetrics). This still remains a small fraction of the >$250B assets in the top 5 spot gold ETFs. The growth of the tokenized gold market cap has been slow and modest between 2020-2024, it was only from 2025 onwards that we saw a pickup in demand (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Market capitalization of top Tokenized Gold tokens (USD)

Source: Coinmetrics as of 02 Mar 2026.

Tokenized gold use

In line with the growth of the tokenized market, market access for tokenized gold has broadened across spot and derivatives trading. 

Spot trading

Tokenized gold is being traded across a number of crypto venues, both centralized and decentralized, in pairs against other currencies or cryptocurrencies.

Looking at the larger tokens combined spot volumes, the reported daily spot volumes were sub-$200m up until Q4’25. On Jan 29th this year volumes surpassed $1.5b for the largest tokens (Coinmetrics). This heightened spot activity coincided with gold price breaking a new all-time high (Figure 1).

To put this into perspective, Jan’ 26 saw over $7b spot volumes in the largest tokenized gold tokens (Coinmetrics). In contrast, the two largest gold ETFs by AUM – SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and iShares Gold Trust (IAU), traded $275b in turnover that month (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Select Gold ETF Volumes (Monthly Aggregate) (USD)

Source: Bloomberg as of 18 Feb 2026.

Looking at on-chain metrics, some trends stand out:

• Address holders tend to concentrate across smaller balances, suggesting larger retail participation. The number of addresses holding a balance larger than $10m is sub-50, compared to addresses holding a balance larger than $1, which is ~70k (as of Jan’26). However, these estimates only take into consideration on-chain addresses and do not provide a full picture, which would include centralized exchange activity, too (Coinmetrics).

• The mean transaction size generally stays in the $10-40,000 nominal range- also suggesting more retail participation as it stands (Coinmetrics).

 Other trading products

Other pockets of tokenized gold activity have been across other markets including perpetual futures, which has picked up in Jan’26 – the current Open Interest across for the largest tokenized gold perpetual futures are around $280m (Coinmetrics). These futures contracts are traded 24/7. 

In terms of volumes traded, in Jan’26, there was a rise in activity, particularly around Jan 29th, that saw combined daily volumes across the largest tokenized gold tokens rise above $4B in volume traded (Figure 7). To put this into perspective where other crypto perpetual futures are trading - tokenized gold perpetuals still make up a small fraction of the market- BTC and ETH average daily volumes in 2026 were $57B and $50B respectively (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Reported Perpetual Futures Volumes across Assets (USD) (daily)

Source: Coinmetrics as of 20 Feb 2026. Past performance is not indicative of future results

Aside from tokenized gold perpetual futures trades, cash-settled gold futures trading is showing signs of activity. Across the digital asset market, brokers and exchanges are rolling out non-crypto brokerage products 

While tokenized gold usage is broadening across the spot and derivatives crypto markets, other vehicles and market access are emerging, notably - Hang Seng Investment has launched a physically-backed gold ETF in Hong Kong, with one share class being tokenized and issued on Ethereum. Elsewhere, HSBC has filed for its Hybrid Gold ETF, which will have a tokenized share structure. 

Professional subscribers can read much more from Goldman's Crypto Research team here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal