One ounce of fine golden was worth $1,790 an ounce 15 months ago. Since then, its value has increased by 3.51% to $1,853 per troy ounce. The top two tokenized coins of gold have seen significant growth, despite gold’s rising value. Pax gold (PAXG) has seen its market capitalization increase by 407% since February 26, 2021. Tether’s XAUT valuation has risen 248% since that date. The market capitalizations of PAXG and XAUT together amount to just under $1 billion.
Pax Gold
There are just over $1Billion in tokenized gold coins today between the top two gold token Blockchain projects. With a $620 billion valuation, pax gold (PAXG), is the first project with the highest market capitalization. The asset-backed token, called PAXG, is an ERC20 token that was built on Ethereum. A single PAXG equates with one fine troy ounce (t oz), London Good Delivery Gold (LBMA).
Paxos issues PAXG and holders can redeem PAXG for LBMA-accredited Good Delivery Gold Bullion Bars with a minimum redemption of 1 t oz. Archive.org statistics show that PAXG was second in tokenized gold coins at the end February 2021 with a market capitalization of $122 million.
PAXG is currently the top-ranked tokenized gold coin market capitalization company. It has grown by 407% in the past 15 months. Since that time, the price of gold has increased only 3.51% from $1,790 per t oz to $1,853. This means that most of PAXG’s growth comes from coins put into circulation.
PAXG’s value was $122 billion on February 26, 2021. That day, $16.9 Million in global trade volume was recorded. Today, PAXG’s valuation of $620 billion was worth $11 million in 24-hour trade volume. The most used trading pair in PAXG is tether ( USDT), which captures 69% all pax gold swaps.
Paxos’ tokenized gold coin has seen 12.67% trades with BUSD. Bitcoin ( BTC) was also the third most traded PAXG pair, with 12.05% trades in the last 24 hours. Other notable PAXG pairings include WETH (3.09%) and BNB (11.21%), USD (1.08%), and EUR (0.79%).
Binance, Kucoin and Crypto.com are the top-ranked exchanges for PAXG trading volume. Tether’s Tether’s AUT is not far behind. PAXG is currently the most valuable tokenized gold coin based on market valuation.
Tether Gold
Tether issues the stablecoin USDT, which is well-known and the most valuable by market capitalization. It is not well known, however, that Tether also issues asset-backed coins which hold redemption value for a few fiat currency.
Tether also issues a token called “tether gold” (XAUT). It is currently the second-largest tokenized gold coin in terms of market capitalization. At the time this article was written, XAUT’s global valuation is $458million and it has experienced $1.45 million in worldwide trade volume over the past 24 hours. Tether’s XAUT website explains that a single XAUT equals 1 t oz if it meets LBMA standards.
Tether claims it has “multiple redemption options.” It also notes that holders of XAUT have the option to request physical gold as long as they have completed TG Commodities Limited’s verification process, and possess the minimum amount of XAUT.
Tether’s tokenized golden coin, XAUT, had a market value of approximately $131 million on February 26, 2021. The 24-hour global trade volume for that day was $1.6million. XAUT’s current market value has increased by 248% to $458 million.
PAXG and the XAUT have a combined value of $1 billion
A few asset-backed tokens are available that leverage the backing and values of precious metals stored in vaults. However, PAXG’s or XAUTs market caps are huge. Based on the current gold price and the number of coins that were issued, they are worth just over $1 billion.
Data shows that there are currently 333,601 PAXG tokens and 246,524XAUT. In comparison to gold’s $11.795 trillion market value, PAXG and XAUT market caps are specks. PAXG’s market capital is ranked 86 out of the 13,400+ cryptocurrencies in the crypto economy. XAUT’s is ranked 112.
