Gold: The Trending Glittering Asset Across TradFi and Web3

Gold’s been glimmering since March 2024…

Gold’s been glimmering since March 2024, when the precious metal finally broke decisively above its long-term ATH zone and entered a strong price discovery phase with sustained bullish momentum.

Gold's Explosive Price Action with it's Bull movement breakout happened on March 2024.

At the time of writing, gold trades around $4,721, representing roughly 127% appreciation from its March 2024 levels.

Golden Time Period – with XAU outperforming BTC!

Gold’s price action has made headlines repeatedly — even if its most famous “gold bug” ambassador Peter Schiff didn’t highlight it, the rally would still be impossible to ignore.

Speaking of Schiff, he would probably be elated: gold has managed to outperform its Web3 “digital gold” counterpart, Bitcoin, over this period.

Since March 2024, Bitcoin has appreciated by roughly 41% (from ~$68,945 to ~$89,313), while gold has moved far more aggressively.

Golden Time Period – with XAU outperforming BTC!

Gold’s price action has made headlines repeatedly — even if its most famous “gold bug” ambassador Peter Schiff didn’t highlight it, the rally would still be impossible to ignore.

Speaking of Schiff, he would probably be elated: gold has managed to outperform its Web3 “digital gold” counterpart, Bitcoin, over this period.

Gold’s having extra glimmer as it’s been recently outperforming BTC!

Since March 2024, Bitcoin has appreciated by roughly 41% (from ~$68,945 to ~$89,313), while gold has moved far more aggressively.

BTC’s price is approximately 41% higher than it’s price since March 2024 right now!

Gold Chart (Macro View): A Slow-Build Breakout Into Price Discovery

This kind of price rhythm isn’t random. As I outlined in my earlier article “Gold’s Legacy Marked by Its Price Footsteps in the Chart: A Cup & Handle Constellation.”

Gold’s long-term breakout was years in the making — with a slow build-up phase followed by a powerful move into price discovery

Gold’s Price History Footprints

This chart from my earlier article highlights the long-term “footsteps” of gold’s price action.

The precious metal has gone through extended dull phases where it takes years to reclaim previous all-time highs, consolidate, and only then break into a new price discovery phase.

Key observations:

• Gold took ~28 years to revisit its 1980 ATH zone (from ~1980 to ~2008/2009).
• Gold took more than 8 years to revisit its 2011 ATH zone (from ~2012 to ~2020).
• Gold took ~4 years to break decisively above its 2020 ATH zone (from ~2020 to ~2024) and enter the current price discovery phase.

Each time gold reaches a major ATH zone, it typically enters a phase of correction, consolidation, and gradual rebuilding before the next sustained bullish expansion begins.

On a macro scale, gold’s long-term price structure resembles a Cup & Handle–style breakout / rounding base breakout, followed by price discovery.

Understanding Gold’s Bull Fuel from it’s early Bull Run Phase!

Last year in March, I also covered the factors behind gold’s lift-off here:
The Golden Movement: Why Gold surged beyond $3,000 this March!

Those reasons still remain relevant.

Why gold switches on as a financial safe haven

Gold’s role in the financial investment world is well established: it behaves as a safe haven and a store-of-value asset.

Gold’s “switch” as an attractive investment asset usually turns on when large players — central banks, institutions, and wealthy individuals — start shifting capital into it. This often happens during periods when investors feel their wealth is being eroded in fiat currencies like USD, especially when liquidity conditions change due to monetary policy.

Since September 2024, the USD has shown phases of weakness as interest rates were cut and liquidity expectations changed.

Rate cuts reduce borrowing costs and increase circulating liquidity, which can weaken the currency’s purchasing power over time. In such periods, investors often shift a portion of wealth from USD-based holdings into gold as a hedge.

FED's Rate cuts since Aug 2024 have brought down interest rates from 5.5% to 3.5%

Investors also move into gold during periods of macroeconomic uncertainty and geopolitical tension.

Last year, tariff uncertainty and rising global trade friction created inflation fears and recession worries, pushing investors toward safe-haven assets like gold.

*Meme from my Article last year on Trump’s Tariffs leading to Market turmoil driving wealth to flea into Gold *

This year, President Trump has again been a major headline driver — from tariff expectations to escalation risks and geopolitical tensions, including Iran-related threats and strategic pressure narratives (such as Greenland). As these uncertainties increase, gold continues to attract demand.

If energy prices were to rise sharply due to geopolitical escalation or supply disruptions, that could add further inflation pressure — another factor that often supports gold.

Investing has seasons: why rotations happen

Financial markets move in seasons, and asset classes rotate based on macro conditions:

• During boom cycles and expanding liquidity, stocks and crypto often perform best.

• During recessionary fears and uncertainty, capital tends to flow into safer assets such as cash, bonds, and gold.

• During tightening phases, USD strength can increase as liquidity becomes expensive and scarce.

Gold is a key asset class in the financial world — so investors naturally look for easier ways to gain exposure to it.

Gold has now entered Web3 through RWAs

Gold has recently debuted into Web3 as an RWA (Real World Asset), giving crypto-native investors on-chain exposure to gold.

Two prominent tokenized gold assets in Web3 are:

• PAXG (Paxos Gold)
• XAU₮ (Tether Gold)

PAXG is issued by Paxos, and XAU₮ is issued by Tether. Both are designed so that each token represents roughly 1 troy ounce of gold held in custody, under the issuer’s terms.

As digitized gold tokens, they are divisible into decimal amounts — meaning an investor can buy small exposure like 0.01 PAXG, instead of needing to buy a whole ounce worth of gold at once.

Tokenized gold becomes a tradable asset in Web3 because it is available across centralized exchanges and certain DeFi venues, usually paired with stablecoins like USDT and USDC. This makes rotations easier:

• stablecoin holders can shift into tokenized gold when USD weakens

• Bitcoin holders can rotate into gold exposure during phases when BTC momentum is dull

• investors can rotate back when risk-on conditions return

Still, tokenized gold is not Bitcoin.

Bitcoin remains Web3’s original “digital gold” because it is decentralized, mined through the Bitcoin network, and not controlled by any central issuer.

PAXG and XAU₮ are issued by centralized entities and rely on third-party trust — including reserve assurances, custody transparency, and issuer-controlled rules. Because issuers can impose restrictions (including freezing in certain circumstances), holders should understand the trust assumptions.

Also, because tokenized gold often exists on major chains like Ethereum, network fees can discourage small retail users from using it actively on-chain, even if it’s easy to trade inside exchanges.

Still, the fact that tokenized gold is actively traded and growing in Web3 is a sign of a larger trend:

Web3 is evolving into a multi-asset financial layer — not only crypto coins, but real-world exposure too.

Gold RWA tokens are Web3 equivalents of Physical Gold ETFs

These tokenized gold assets resemble traditional gold derivative exposure like gold ETFs — meaning they can be seen as Web3-native gold ETF equivalents, but with crypto transferability and market access.

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Know more about these GOLD RWA tokens-:

• PAXG: https://www.paxos.com/pax-gold
• XAUT: https://gold.tether.to/

Image Credits –:

• Banner created by me using Canva
• All Price Charts are from Trading View
• Fed interest rate Cut Chart from Trading View

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