Gold has been one of the hottest assets since the start of 2025. Since the start of 2025, gold has gone up more than 100%. Investors flock to buy and sell their gold because the price keeps reaching new all-time highs. Currently, investors have the option to buy physical gold, digital gold, and tokenized gold or gold-backed crypto. Read to find out the difference between physical, digital, and tokenized gold.
Key Takeaways
- 🧠 A Shifting Market Landscape in 2026: Despite gold traditionally moving inversely to stocks and crypto, recent geopolitical uncertainties and the Fed’s quantitative easing have caused a decoupling. Investors are now accumulating both “risk-on” stocks and “risk-off” gold simultaneously.
- 🥇 Physical Gold is for Absolute Control: Holding physical bars or jewelry remains the ultimate “unhackable” insurance for long-term investors. However, it sacrifices liquidity and comes with high markups, taxes, and physical storage costs.
- ⛏️ Digital Gold Offers Everyday Convenience: App-based digital gold and ETFs provide a highly accessible, low-barrier entry point for casual savers. The primary trade-off is counterparty risk, as investors must trust the platform’s transparency and custodial practices.
- 💻 Tokenized Gold (RWA) Merges Stability with Crypto Utility: Tokens like PAXG and XAUT represent a massive innovation, bringing 1:1 physical gold-backed assets onto the blockchain. This offers crypto natives the tangible stability of gold combined with 24/7 trading, high transparency, low spreads, and DeFi compatibility.
Investing in Gold in 2026
Gold has been the ultimate safety asset for hundreds of years. People invest in gold every year because they believe it never goes down. It is also one of the ultimate anti-recession and anti-inflation assets. In the risk curve spectrum, gold is a ‘risk-off’ asset, in contrast to Bitcoin and crypto as the extreme ‘risk-on’ asset.
2026 presents a unique situation for gold, crypto, and stocks. Since December 2025, the Fed has publicly said about starting Quantitative Easing (QE). Gold is usually inversely correlated with stocks and crypto. When stocks and crypto are up, god is down and vice versa. This is because investors usually flock to gold during high-inflation periods and return to stocks once QE starts.
However, with so many geopolitical uncertainties during the last 2 years, investors are accumulating both gold and stocks at the same time. This decoupling has triggered an identity crisis for investors. Digital gold, aka Bitcoin, is severely underperforming compared to stocks and precious metals (gold and silver). The digital gold thesis for Bitcoin is being tested.
However, crypto still managed to benefit from the gold mania. During the last two years, crypto projects found a way to tokenize gold into onchain cryptocurrencies. Crypto investors can now own crypto and gold in their Portfolio.
Today’s market offers three distinct ways to own gold, each serving a different master:
- Physical Gold: For the purist seeking unhackable insurance.
- Digital Gold (ETFs/Apps): For the trader seeking frictionless exposure.
- Tokenized Gold (RWA): The new challenger, putting real gold bars on the blockchain to combine crypto flexibility with hard asset stability.
The Evolution of Gold: The Rise of Digital and Tokenized Gold
Investing in Digital Gold
Digital gold has been rising in popularity for the past few years. A lot of investment and trading platforms now provide the option of buying digital gold. It is cheaper (because you can buy in smaller quantities), more convenient, doesn’t include extra fees, and does not require storage. However, there are many instances of scams for physical gold, including illegal companies, fake underlying gold, etc.
Currently, there are many choices for buying digital gold, but so many of them aren’t transparent about where they store their gold or how they back each gram of the digital gold. This creates confusion and discourages users.
When we talk about digital gold, Gold-based ETFs are different because they are mostly used by funds for trading and offered to institutional investors.
However, the advantage of buying digital gold is clear. As long as you buy it from a trusted source. It can be a smart way to invest in gold as it is much more liquid and easier to buy or sell. Additionally, the fees and spread will be considerably smaller compared to buying physical gold.
What is Tokenized Gold?
Source: InvestingHaven.
Tokenized gold is a form of digital gold migrated into the blockchain for better transparency and more convenience for crypto users. The gold is tokenized into tokens, which are backed by physical gold and track the price of gold in real-time. This is part of the RWA or Real-World Assets innovation that has become very popular in the last two years.
Tokenized gold-backed crypto provides global access to anyone in the world to invest in gold and a 24/7 market where you can buy or sell instantly. Additionally, there are no hidden fees when buying tokenized gold, and the spread will be significantly better than investing in physical gold. For crypto investors and traders, tokenized gold means they can hold both crypto and commodities in their crypto wallets.
Lastly, the most popular tokenized gold is distributed by Pax and Tether. Both of these companies have proven track records in the industry and are transparent about how they store and track their underlying gold. So, PAXG and XAUT are two of the best tokenized gold you can buy and are available on many crypto exchanges. However, this doesn’t mean they have zero risks.
You can buy tokenized gold from Pax (PAXG) or Tether (XAUT) directly onchain such as on Solana or Ethereum, and on crypto exchanges like Pintu.
Dive deep and read about gold-backed crypto or tokenized gold: What is Gold-Backed Crypto? – Pintu Academy.
Comparing Physical Gold vs. Digital Gold vs. Tokenized Gold
| Feature | Physical Gold (Emas Fisik) | Digital Gold (Emas Digital/Apps) | Tokenized Gold (Crypto/RWA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is it? | Bars, coins, or jewelry you hold in your hand. | Electronic balance in an app. | An electronic balance in an app. |
| Primary Utility | Insurance / Store of Value. | Savings / Easy Investment. | DeFi Utility / Collateral / Trading. |
| Liquidity | Low. Must visit a shop/pawnshop to sell (limited hours). | High. Sell instantly in-app (usually market hours). | Instant. Trade 24/7 on DEXs or CEXs. |
| Storage Cost | High. Requires a safe or safety deposit box. | Low/Zero. Often free or small admin fee. | Self-Custody. You pay gas fees to move it; no storage fee. |
| Spread (Fees) | High (5% – 15%). Manufacture & shipping costs included. | Medium. Depending on the platform. | Low. Very tight spreads on crypto exchanges and onchain. |
| Minimum Buy | High. Usually starts at 0.5g or 1g. | Very Low. Can start from $0.50 (IDR 10k). | Low. Depends on the exchange. |
| Ownership | Direct. You possess the asset. | Indirect. You trust the app provider (Counterparty risk). | Direct (Digital). You hold the private keys to the asset. |
| Best For… | Long-term holding. | Beginners & casual savers (DCA). | Crypto natives, Traders, & DeFi users. |
Investing Tips When Choosing to Invest in Gold
1. Choose Physical Gold If You Want Control
Physical gold will always have its place with investors. You don’t have any counterparty risks, you have full control over your gold, and many people love the fact that the gold is real and physical. Many people buy physical gold and store it for ten or twenty years before selling it.
However, the price for this is that you will always be constrained by market availability, and you need to physically sell it. Physical gold will also be constrained by storage, as you can’t take it overseas (the tax for moving gold is high) or move it around carelessly.
Additionally, in some countries, such as Indonesia, selling physical gold to a third party means selling for a lower price (10% to 20% price difference). Not to mention the additional tax and various fees. However, this won’t be a problem for long-term investors who want to hold gold for 5+ years.
2. Choose Digital Gold If You Want Convenience
Digital gold is one of the easiest and one of the most convenient ways to invest in gold. Many everyday users use this because of how easy it is and how low the barrier to entry is. Many platforms, such as banks, e-commerce, etc now offer some kind of way to buy gold. People can now buy gold everywhere.
However, this creates its own problem: many platforms aren’t transparent with where they hold their gold and whether users can redeem physical gold or not. In India, this has become a huge problem, where the government even warned that digital gold products are not regulated. Also, the safety of digital gold is questionable, as each platform will use its own methods.
The best type of digital gold are those publicly listed on stock exchanges or managed by big funds. According to the World Gold Council, demand for Gold ETFs has been constantly rising and accounts for two-thirds of the demand for gold in the US.
3. Tokenized Gold is the Ideal Choice for Gold Investment in Crypto
Source: RWA.xyz.
Even though tokenized gold is a relatively new innovation in the context of digital gold, its popularity has been exponentially rising. Many crypto investors and users now trust gold-backed crypto. As has been said, Tether and Paxos are two giants in the crypto industry. Pax and Tether also produce monthly transparency reports for their tokens and the corresponding gold reserve.
The market caps of PAXG and XAUT have risen more than 1,000% over four years. The market cap of PAXG and XAUT is now around $2.2 billions with $18 billions worth in monthly transfer volume. This shows how much tokenized gold or gold-backed crypto has grown within the industry. If we compare it to DeFi protocols, this would put tokenized gold as the 6th biggest protocol by TVL.
PAXG and XAUT are two of the biggest gold-backed cryptocurrencies.
Deep dive on both of them here:
- What Is PAXG? A Complete Guide to the Digital Gold Token – Pintu Academy.
- What Is Tether Gold (XAUt)? Digital Gold on the Blockchain – Pintu Academy.
Tokenized gold is ideal for crypto investors looking to invest in gold without moving from their crypto wallets and exchanges. This is also convenient for users who want a liquid, 24/7 digital gold. In addition, there are no hidden fees for tokenized gold and you can access it from anywhere in the world.
Buy Gold-Backed Crypto on Pintu
For those of you who are interested in buying gold-backed crypto, there is no need to worry. You can buy one of the tokens, PAXG, on Pintu. The following is how to buy gold-backed crypto PAXG on Pintu:
- Create a Pintu account and follow the process of verifying your identity to start trading.
- On the homepage, click the deposit button and top up the Pintu balance using your preferred payment method.
- Go to the market page and look for PAXG.
- Click buy and fill in the amount you want.
- Now you have PAXG as an asset!
You can safely and conveniently purchase other cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, SOL, and others safely and easily on Pintu. Pintu diligently evaluates all its crypto assets, highlighting the significance of being cautious.
Pintu is also compatible with popular wallets such as Metamask to facilitate your transactions. Download Pintu app on Play Store and App Store! Pintu is a fully regulated exchange certified by OJK and CFX.
Aside from buying and trading crypto assets, you can expand your knowledge about cryptocurrencies through various Pintu Academy articles. All Pintu Academy articles are for knowledge and educational purposes, not as financial advice.
Conclusion
The concept of investing in gold has evolved far beyond locking physical bars in a safe. Today’s market provides a spectrum of choices tailored to the specific needs of modern investors. Whether you prioritize the sovereign control of physical gold, the casual convenience of digital apps, or the borderless, 24/7 liquidity of tokenized crypto assets, gold remains a highly accessible and foundational anti-inflationary tool. Ultimately, the best method depends on your personal investment timeline, need for liquidity, and comfort with blockchain technology.
References
- “Gold Demand Trends: US Focus Q4 and Full Year 2025”, World Gold Council, accessed on February 10, 2026.
- Marcel Deer, “What is a gold-backed token and how does it work?”, CoinTelegraph, accessed on February 11, 2026.
- Taki T., “The Future of Tokenized Gold: Bridging Tradition and Innovation In 2025 & Beyond”, InvestingHaven, accessed on February 12, 2026.