Tokenized gold withstands market stress while DeFi usage stays below 2%
Tokenized gold spot trading volume reached $90.7 billion during the first quarter as bullion rallied. However, only $63 million in Tether Gold and PAX Gold is currently deployed as collateral on Aave v3 and Morpho protocols. This represents just 1.5% of their combined $4.2 billion market capitalization. Despite limited decentralized finance adoption, the asset successfully passed stress testing after processing significant liquidations without disruption during a 10% market sell-off.
Key takeaways
- 1Tokenized gold spot trading volume reached $90.7 billion in the first quarter of the year.
- 2Only $63 million of the $4.2 billion tokenized gold market cap is used as collateral in DeFi.
- 3Aave v3 successfully processed its largest XAUT liquidations during a 10% gold market drop.
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Why it matters
While real-world asset tokenization is scaling rapidly, low collateralization rates show investors still view tokenized gold mainly as a store of value rather than productive DeFi capital. Market participants should monitor borrow rates and protocol integrations to gauge future liquidity integration.
Discussion
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