Gold re-emerged as a high-demand asset in August, drawing interest from multiple directions. Crypto traders turned to tokenized gold and perpetual futures both as a hedge against inflation and as a speculative instrument.

Gold has not been forgotten in the crypto space, where tokenized assets and gold-linked contracts have spread across the ecosystem. Tokenized gold tokens, such as Tether's XAUT and Paxos-issued PAXG, are digital representations of physical gold held in reserve, with each token typically backed by one troy ounce of bullion. Although gold sits below its all-time highs, the recent rally into the $4,600 range brought renewed trading interest (price chart). Gold later retreated to around $4,480, with XAUT trading at $4,474.72.

On-chain gold led by Tether's XAUT

The trend of on-chain gold remains spearheaded by Tether's XAUT. The token expanded through additional minting over the past three months, while trading volumes stay near their peak levels for 2026 (data).

XAUT gained decentralized activity through its use as collateral in lending, and the token also saw more active DEX trading in August (asset data). As of September 2026, XAUT carried $3.15B in value, with another $59M flowing into Tether's tokenized gold as of September 4.

Around $2.39M in XAUT is trading on Uniswap V3, adding to on-chain activity. Overall, XAUT and PAXG are the most widely traded gold-backed tokens on decentralized markets.

XAUT is also available as collateral on Lighter, boosting the perpetual futures market.

Gold returns on perpetual futures markets

Gold returned as one of the top perpetual futures contracts on HIP-3, the Hyperliquid builder-deployed perpetual market framework that lets third parties list new trading pairs. Open interest climbed back to $750M, with $299M in daily trading (position data).

Most whale positions on gold are on the long side, with the largest whale currently carrying more than $273K in unrealized gains. As of September 4, the unrealized losses of the largest short position had expanded to $2.2M.

Gold also regained appeal following the recent trend of trading semiconductor stocks on the same platform, which has broadened the range of non-crypto assets available to on-chain traders. Uncertainty around the war in Iran and ongoing inflation signals further boosted gold's attractiveness.

AI agent accumulates gold-backed tokens

Additional demand came from a single whale wallet, identified with high probability as belonging to the Antalpha AI agent (wallet, entity). Over the past month, the AI agent added several tranches of 1K XAUT while gold traded closer to $4,000 per ounce, and the position currently carries unrealized gains.

The Antalpha wallet shows only inflows, with no attempts to cash out. As of September 4, the AI agent held 16.12K XAUT, valued at over $71M.

Another Antalpha wallet holds over 33K XAUT tokens along with other assets. The AI agent uses other wallets to actively trade XAUT, usually sending funds to Bitfinex. Some holdings have also been sent for custody to a Cobo.com wallet.

Antalpha is a relatively sizeable XAUT buyer and is viewed as an indicator of interest in tokenized gold. The presence of a new wallet dedicated to strong accumulation may signal the improved influence of XAUT.

Overall, XAUT increased its total holder count to 84,756 wallets, up more than 16% in the last 30 days. Over $4.6B in value was moved through XAUT in August, across more than 53K active addresses.

Most XAUT tokens remain on Ethereum, though over the past month the supply on BNB Chain and Monad increased, potentially moving into new use cases.