PANews reported on March 1st, citing Cointelelegrap, that Iggy Ioppe, former Chief Investment Officer of Credit Suisse and current CIO of a liquidity infrastructure company, stated that because CME gold futures trading is suspended from 5:00 PM ET on Fridays to 6:00 PM ET on Sundays, tokenized gold assets such as PAX Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUt) become the only publicly traded market. During this period, almost all publicly observable gold price formation occurs on-chain, thus tokenized gold performs almost 100% of the price discovery function during the weekend.
This week, amid geopolitical shocks such as the US-Israel airstrikes against Iran, tokenized gold prices surged, briefly breaking through key price levels, driven by safe-haven demand. Simultaneously, major crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum experienced a synchronized decline. Currently, key participants in these on-chain gold markets include market makers, cross-market liquidity providers, and crypto-native macro traders, who utilize tokenized gold for arbitrage, collateralization, hedging, and yield strategies. Some institutions also monitor on-chain gold price movements over the weekend to assess potential "gaps" before the CME market opens, but they primarily view it as a reference signal rather than a direct basis for establishing positions.
