1911 Gold Corporation (TSXV: AUMB; OTCQX: AUMBF)
1911 Gold is Manitoba’s Gold Standard - Ready, Permitted and High-Grade 1911 Gold is an Emerging Gold Producer, with Significant Cash Flow Generation and District-Scale Growth Potential
Just three months into 2026, spot trading of tokenized gold has already surpassed the entire volume of 2025. The $90.7 billion logged in the first quarter alone exceeded last year’s $84.6 billion total, signaling a rapid acceleration in crypto investors’ appetite for around‑the‑clock exposure to the traditional safe haven.
But whether the rally can sustain itself – and how much further it might go – depends largely on fixing deep structural flaws that have kept the market fragmented, illiquid, and overly dependent on a handful of products.
The tokenized gold space remains a near‑duopoly. Over the past fifteen months, PAX Gold (PAXG) averaged $5.72 billion in monthly spot trading volume, while TetherGold (XAUT) averaged $5.32 billion. Together, they accounted for the lion’s share of the $11.69 billion monthly market average, according to the latest RWA report from CoinGecko.
Yet month‑to‑month activity has been anything but smooth. When physical gold prices hit record highs in October 2025, tokenized gold volume surged to $21.38 billion–more than triple September’s $6.73 billion. The following month, it eased back to $14.07 billion. Such volatility underscores how on‑chain gold remains tied to broader macroeconomic swings, not yet a mature, independent asset class.
Despite the eye‑catching numbers, industry veterans say tokenized gold has barely scratched the surface of its potential. The main bottleneck is not a lack of investor interest, but a fractured infrastructure.
“I don’t think gold in general… has a demand problem,” said Kurt Hemecker, CEO of Gold Token SA, the tokenization arm of MKS PAMP. “It’s more about market structure.”
Hemecker points out that today’s tokenized gold products operate under a patchwork of custody models, legal frameworks, and redemption terms. Investors cannot treat different tokens as interchangeable; each must be evaluated separately. That fragmentation chills trust and liquidity, preventing digital gold from functioning as a unified asset class.
“Not all digital gold products are created equal,” he added.
The World Gold Council (WGC) is trying to change that with its proposed “Gold as a Service” model. The initiative aims to build shared, standardized infrastructure for custody, issuance, reconciliation, and redemption. Instead of every issuer reinventing the wheel, they could plug into a common system.
“They’re really fixing the plumbing,” Hemecker said. “The idea there is that issuers don’t have to rebuild everything from scratch.”
If successful, the result could be a truly fungible market. Once trust shifts from individual centralized issuers to the system itself, tokenized gold tokens could trade like physical bullion – based on standardized purity and weight. They could be easily transferred, used as collateral, or embedded into broader financial products.
In the near term, tokenized gold’s trajectory will track the spot gold price. But the long‑term upside hinges on standardization. A recent analysis showed blockchain‑based gold tokens growing 2.6 times faster than physical gold, with the market cap of tokenized gold crossing $5 billion in Q1 2026. Institutional interest remains strong despite recent volatility.
“In general, we’re still feeling a pretty bullish attitude from institutions, as they’re diving into this market,” Hemecker said.
Challenges remain – uneven monthly volumes, regulatory uncertainty, and cross‑border compliance. Yet $90.7 billion in a single quarter proves that the demand for 24/7 digital gold is real and powerful. As Hemecker put it, “It starts to create a more fungible market, and the overall size of that market just grows. Then it leads to innovation.”
How far tokenized gold can go will largely be a function of how quickly the industry repairs its plumbing. The door, he suggests, has only just been pushed open.
