Tokenized gold has grown fivefold to about $6 billion, industry body says

Gold sold as blockchain tokens has grown about fivefold since late 2024 to roughly $6 billion, according to research from the World Gold Council and Boston Consulting Group published Oct. 19. The gold industry's own trade body is now pitching tokens and app-based gold as a new way to sell the metal, and it is building the plumbing to do it.

The report, released at the Money20/20 USA conference in Las Vegas, puts the whole "digital gold" market at $45 billion to $55 billion today. Tokenized gold is "one segment of the digital gold market alongside vaulted digital gold," the council said.

How the market works

The council splits digital gold into two segments, vaulted digital gold and tokenized gold. In plain terms, the first is a claim on metal held in a vault, usually bought through an app; the second puts that claim on a blockchain as a token. The council said trading in the token segment is speeding up: "Cumulative spot trading volumes in tokenised gold exceeded US$90bn in the first quarter of 2026, more than in the whole of 2025."

The evidence

WGC and BCG's base case, their projection rather than Le Coin's, has digital gold growing "by around 27% a year" to $160 billion to $170 billion by 2031, rising to $270 billion to $280 billion "if more barriers fall faster."

The headline $700 billion is not a forecast. The release calls it "the report's estimate of total latent demand that could be released if today's barriers to adoption were removed, rather than a near-term forecast."

The council said distribution matters most. Where digital gold is sold through super apps, payment platforms and banking apps, "as in China, India and Indonesia, the share of investors who hold it is currently up to seven times higher than in less mature markets." It put about 65% of the latent demand with people who do not yet own gold.

The publisher has a stake. The council's chief executive, David Tait, tied the findings to its own product: "That is the role Gold as a Service is designed to play. As shared infrastructure in development, it aims to help issuers bring competitive, compliant digital gold products to market more efficiently."

In Le Coin's view, the measured number is the story and the sized opportunity is the pitch. About $6 billion of tokens is a small slice of a $45 billion to $55 billion digital gold market, and the jump in trading volume is the clearest sign of real use.

The objection

In Le Coin's view, the strongest objection is that this is a trade body sizing a market it wants to serve. The $700 billion is the council's own estimate of latent demand, The report page credits the $90 billion trading figure to CoinGecko's RWA Report 2026, but neither it nor the release says where the $6 billion figure comes from, and the full report sits behind a login.

What to watch

In Le Coin's view, the tell is whether tokenized gold's trading volume keeps outrunning 2025 through the rest of 2026, and whether banks and payment apps outside Asia sign on to Gold as a Service once it leaves development.

Sources

1. World Gold Council, press release, "Unlocking Digital Gold's US$700bn Opportunity," Oct. 19, 2026 (PDF). https://www.gold.org/download/file/21284/Digital_Gold_Market_Research_Press_Release.pdf (accessed 9:14 a.m. ET, Oct. 20, 2026)
2. World Gold Council and Boston Consulting Group, "Digital Gold: Unlocking a US$700bn Opportunity," report page. https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/digital-gold-market-report (accessed 9:10 a.m. ET, Oct. 20, 2026)

Holding the Corner.

Not financial advice.