Tokenised gold faces practical hurdles despite technological advances

Five years after a Swiss refinery-linked experiment sought to fuse physical bullion with blockchain tokens, the industry’s enthusiasm for tokenised gold remains tempered by practical obstacles that go well beyond technology. The original model , digital tokens tied 1:1 to gold held in secure refineries, fractionalised for gram-level ownership and redeemable for physical bars , solved custody and transport questions on paper but failed to generate broad market demand. The result, industry participants now say, is a cautionary tale: infrastructure alone cannot conjure liquidity or investor appetite.

Proponents point to recent iterations that have kept the same core idea alive while rebranding and relaunching products. According to AMINA Group’s materials, the AMINA Gold Token (AGT) represents legal co-ownership of one gram of 100% fine gold stored at Swiss refineries and is issued and custodied by AMINA Bank under FINMA supervision. The firm says AGT is fully backed and redeemable, and that its model reduces traditional handling, storage and insurance costs by anchoring ownership at the refinery rather than in large vault networks. Separately, Gold Token S.A., the tokenisation arm of MKS PAMP Group, has taken its DGLD® token on-chain and listed it on the Base network via Aerodrome, promoting 24/7 access to Swiss-vaulted PAMP® gold with gram-level redemption options.

Yet the persistent operational misalignments between blockchain and conventional finance remain the biggest practical hurdle. The market still operates on a mix of continuous on-chain trading and legacy reference markets that settle on different timetables. As critics note, price discovery becomes fraught when an asset with an established market schedule begins trading around the clock; weekend or out-of-hours trades can create speculative signals that feed back into traditional markets, amplifying volatility rather than smoothing it. Compliance, risk and back-office functions within regulated institutions are likewise structured for business-hour cycles, leaving many firms ill-equipped for true 24/7 monitoring and liquidity management.

Industry observers now argue tokenisation’s strongest use cases are not digitised versions of liquid, listed equities but illiquid, high-value assets where blockchain’s programmability and divisibility enable genuinely new markets. Private equity, commercial real estate and infrastructure funds are frequently cited as areas where tokenisation could lower entry barriers, allow smaller investors into previously closed pools and create on-chain yield opportunities for stablecoin holders. Consultancy forecasts referenced by market commentators envisage substantial growth in tokenised private markets by the end of the decade, while large asset managers have publicly described tokenisation as inevitable and pointed to growing balances in digital wallets.

Regulation is playing a decisive role in whether these models scale. Legislative proposals in the United States aiming to clarify the treatment of stablecoins and digital assets have been presented as necessary precursors to institutional engagement. At the same time, industry partnerships are building the bridge between banking standards and token infrastructure: AMINA Bank has announced a collaboration with Tokeny, now part of Apex Group, to combine regulated banking custody with a tokenisation operating system intended to address institutional bottlenecks for assets such as government bonds and corporate securities.

Even with clearer rules and stronger plumbing, market participants stress that the path to mass adoption will be gradual and technical rather than spectacular. The firms that prosper, market veterans say, will be those concentrating on the less glamorous tasks of aligning settlement rhythms, creating reliable price-reference mechanisms, constructing liquidity-management tools and embedding compliance into operational workflows. In this framing, splitting a high-priced share into smaller tokens is merely cosmetic; the substantive innovation lies in programmable structures that enable automated yield strategies, faster cross-border settlement and novel on‑chain credit arrangements.

For now, tokenised gold experiments encapsulate both the promise and the limits of the technology. They demonstrate that secure, auditable, redeemable gold-on-chain is feasible and commercially repeatable. They also show that technical capability must be married to market design, regulatory clarity and institutional readiness before tokenisation moves beyond pilot projects and into mainstream capital markets. The industry’s next chapter will be written by those who solve these foundational frictions rather than by providers that emphasise novelty over operability.

Amina and DGLD describe their tokens as fully backed and redeemable at gram-level and highlight Swiss vaulting and regulatory oversight as selling points; regulators and institutional partners will be the ultimate arbiters of whether these features translate into sustainable secondary markets. Tokenised products carry complexity and liquidity risk, and their regulatory treatment and operational parameters may evolve over time.