The three gold-backed cryptocurrencies most important today are Pax Gold (PAXG), Tether Gold (XAUt), and to a lesser extent, projects like Kinesis Gold (KAU) or Quorium/Gold mint (depending on the exchange you operate on). All seek to combine the security of physical gold with the flexibility of blockchain.
Pax Gold
PAXG represents one troy ounce of London Good Delivery gold held by Brink’s in London, backed regulated by Paxos in the U.S. and frequent audits that give a lot of confidence to the investor.
It is one of the gold tokens with the highest liquidity and presence on major exchanges and DeFi, allowing the use of “digital gold” as collateral for loans or yield without having to move physical bars.
Tether Gold
#XAUT also represents one ounce of physical gold of London Good Delivery quality, held in Swiss vaults, and is issued by Tether, the same company behind USDT, which gives it a huge user base.
It often alternates with PAXG as the leader by market capitalization in the tokenized gold niche and is widely used as a store of value in countries where they already trust Tether products, combining a refuge in gold with crypto accessibility 24/7.
Kinesis Gold
KAU allows you to have very small fractions of gold (for example, 1 gram per token), facilitating savings in gold at a low ticket for retail users.
Some of these systems also offer rewards programs for using and moving the token (like “yield on gold”), mixing the stability of the metal with typical incentives from the crypto ecosystem.
All give you direct exposure to the price of gold without custody fees from a traditional broker or the need to store bars, and can be moved in minutes to any compatible wallet.
They serve as a refuge against inflation and crisis, but with more liquidity and use in DeFi than a gold ETF, allowing them to be combined with trading, staking, or crypto loan strategies.