Who Sets Prices During Weekend Market Closures? Blockchain Takes Over the Gold Market
When the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) gold futures are closed on weekends, tokens like PAXG and XAUT almost shoulder the entire market pricing responsibility. During the gap from the CME futures close on the weekend to the reopen, traditional markets come to a complete halt. Iggy Ope, former Chief Investment Officer at Credit Suisse, pointed out that this is when gold pricing shifts to the blockchain, becoming the only transparent and public trading channel during weekends. Interestingly, when traditional futures reopen on Monday, price movements almost follow weekend crypto market trends, fully reflecting the price discovery function of on-chain markets.
Tokenized Gold Market Cap Surpasses $4.4 Billion
According to Cointelegraph, behind the shift in pricing power is the explosive growth of tokenized gold. Over the past year, this sector’s market cap has increased by nearly $2.8 billion, doubling to reach $4.4 billion. An astonishing growth rate of 177% not only outpaces the overall physical gold market and most mainstream gold ETFs but also nearly triples the number of wallet holdings. Its capital attraction accounts for a quarter of all net inflows into real-world assets (RWA). In Q4 2025, it even hit a peak quarterly trading volume of over $126 billion, making it the second-largest gold investment product globally by trading volume.
24/7 Advantage Becomes a New Favorite for Hedging and Arbitrage
The 24-hour, non-stop nature of tokenized gold makes it a valuable tool for investors to manage risks flexibly. Currently, the most active players are market makers and major crypto holders, who exploit price differences between digital and traditional markets for arbitrage. During turbulent times, they also use it as a hedging instrument. For example, when conflicts erupted in the Middle East over a weekend, traditional investors couldn’t react, but crypto funds quickly poured into XAUT and PAXG for hedging, causing prices to spike briefly to around $5,450 and $5,536. Now, even traditional trading departments are closely monitoring on-chain weekend prices to anticipate gap risks on Monday.
Regulatory and Liquidity Challenges Remain
Although prospects are promising, there are still hurdles before tokenized gold becomes fully mainstream. Ope admitted that the liquidity of these assets still lags behind traditional futures or ETFs, and large investors’ entry and exit can cause significant price volatility. Additionally, fragmented regulations across countries and differences in custody and accounting standards slow down institutional adoption. Therefore, tokenized gold is unlikely to directly replace traditional financial products in the near term. The future will likely see both coexist, each serving different market needs.
This article, “Tokenized Gold Market Cap Surpasses $4.4 Billion, Becomes Weekend Market Closure Price Indicator,” first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.
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