Executive Summary

The physical investment gold market is worth about $13 trillion. But digital gold, including vaulted digital gold and tokenised gold, represents less than 1% of the global market. 

Why does it matter?

We are seeing signs of an inflection point. With more recently launched tokenised products triggering a surge in activity, the fledgling digital gold market has grown into a $45-$55 billion1 category. Tokenised gold generated $90 billion of cumulative spot trading volumes in the first quarter of 2026, more than in the whole of 2025.2 More importantly, wider financial markets are in the midst of a structural digital transformation. As a result, tokenised investments are increasingly mainstream.


For the purposes of this report, and to understand digital gold’s potential, we surveyed more than 12,000 retail investors globally and interviewed 20 leading experts, helping us unpack the drivers of adoption and factors shaping demand. Our key finding:

Appeal is strong but is not (yet) converting at scale. Nearly 9 in 10 retail investors signal a willingness to invest in digital gold under the right conditions. Our modelling suggests that if stakeholders address the principal barriers to adoption, they can boost both participation and portfolio allocations, unlocking up to $700 billion3 in latent demand. Fully realised, this would create a market that broadly matches physically-backed gold ETFs today.

$700B - Total latent demand for digital gold in the long term

Perhaps a more relevant question is: how much potential demand can be converted into investment over the next five years? Our base case is that the digital gold market could grow at approximately 27% CAGR, reaching $160–$170 billion by 2031.4

Fulfilling this potential will be contingent on market participants addressing four barriers:

  1. Trust as the swing factor. Nearly four in five investors say their priority is to trust the provider before investing: when asked what would make them more open to digital gold, the most cited answer is evidence that the product is safe and legitimate. Another important trust lever is a clear and accessible path to redeem holdings for physical gold, which would give investors confidence that a real asset backs their position. Regulation and consumer protection, seen across investor segments as a key barrier to entry will play an important role, too.
  2. Access through familiar channels. Where digital gold is embedded in mainstream channels such as super-apps, payment platforms and banking apps, as seen in India, China and Indonesia, penetration is up to seven times higher than in markets where such distribution does not yet exist.
  3. New utilities for gold. Unlocking latent demand partially hinges on what digital gold can be used for, not just how easy it is to buy. Yield generation, enabled by lending or use as collateral, is the top-cited unique selling point, ahead of being able to use it to make payments. This points to a potentially significant shift: product innovation could give investors new ways to use gold, alongside its long-standing role as a store of value.
  4. Competitive pricing is a prerequisite. Even where other barriers are addressed, digital products must compete on price with alternative formats, including physical gold and gold-backed ETFs. While a low price is not, on its own, a major reason to invest in digital gold, an uncompetitive price point is ranked as the second most common barrier to entry.

New money for gold.

Around 65% of latent demand comes from people who have not yet invested in gold. Among those who already hold gold in other forms, more than half would fund a digital gold investment with money not currently allocated to the asset. Rather than cannibalising demand for bars, coins or gold-backed ETFs, digital gold is thus likely to attract new investors, and new money.

Critical for near-term uptake is the activation of a younger audience. Awareness of digital gold reaches 50% among 25–34-year-olds, compared with just 23% among those aged 55 and older. Younger cohorts are twice as likely as older cohorts to say they would invest if barriers to entry were addressed.

In conclusion, the next five years will be crucial in determining whether digital gold will break out. Success in addressing the four barriers will spur participation, while a failure to address them at meaningful scale could leave digital gold as a relative niche in the wider market.


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Footnotes

1Refer to the Methodology section for further detail on how these figures were calculated

2CoinGecko RWA Report 2026

3Refer to the Methodology section for further detail on how these figures were calculated

4All scenarios are modelled based on an 'all else being equal' basis, including the gold price

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