Blockchain Gold Markets Now Set Weekend Price for Physical Precious Metal

The gold price discovery process has shifted significantly over the weekend, with blockchain networks taking on almost all responsibility for determining prices during this time. This is according to Iggy Ioppe, former chief investment officer at Credit Suisse and current CIO at liquidity infrastructure firm Theo.

Ioppe notes that when U.S. futures markets close on Friday evening and don't reopen until Sunday evening, there's a roughly 25-hour window where regulated futures markets are inactive. During this time, private over-the-counter trades in Asia occur but aren't publicly reported.

As a result, tokenized gold assets like PAXG and XAUT become among the only continuously traded, publicly visible instruments tied to gold prices during the weekend.

The shift towards blockchain networks is occurring alongside rapid growth in the tokenized gold sector. The combined market capitalization of tokenized gold expanded from approximately $1.6 billion to $4.4 billion over the past year, a 177% increase that outpaced both the broader gold market and most major spot gold ETFs.

Trading volume in the sector reached roughly $178 billion in 2025, peaking above $126 billion in the fourth quarter alone. This would rank tokenized gold as the second-largest gold investment product globally by trading volume after SPDR Gold Shares.