Wintermute Enters Tokenised Gold Arena as Onchain Volumes Outpace ETFs
The firm reported that tokenised gold trading volume reached US$126 billion in Q4 2025, surpassing the volume of five major gold ETFs during that same period.
The move aligns with a broader trend of financial institutions and regulators, including Malaysia’s central bank and CME Group, exploring distributed ledger technology for payments and settlement infrastructure.
Crypto trading firm Wintermute is moving beyond pure crypto market making into tokenised commodities, starting with gold.
The firm said Monday its institutional OTC desk will begin handling trades in Pax Gold and Tether Gold, the two largest gold-backed tokens by market value, targeting counterparties that want gold exposure with blockchain settlement instead of bullion custody or ETF plumbing.
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The Rise Of Tokenisation
Wintermute says the timing is driven by actual demand, claiming tokenised gold trading volume hit US$126 billion (AU$192.78 billion) in Q4 2025, topping the volume of five major gold ETFs over the same period.
Wintermute is planning to introduce algorithmically optimised spot trading and says institutions will be able to trade PAXG and XAUT against stablecoins, fiat currencies, and major crypto assets, which is effectively a toolkit for real-time hedging across both traditional and on-chain venues.
The broader context is that tokenisation is increasingly being framed as a proper financial infrastructure, and even countries are chiming in. Malaysia’s central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia, will run three regulatory sandbox initiatives through its Digital Asset Innovation Hub, focused on wholesale payment use cases for domestic and cross-border transactions using distributed ledger technology.
Even firms like the CME Group are testing versions that stay close to existing rails. Its CEO, Terry Duffy, recently said the exchange is exploring a potential “CME coin” that could run on a decentralised network and be used by other market participants.
Even platforms that were burned by market plumbing have started selling tokenisation as a safety upgrade, with Robinhood arguing that tokenised stocks could reduce the settlement and collateral bottlenecks that contributed to forced trading restrictions during the 2021 GameStop episode.
Read more: Australia’s SMSFs Embrace Crypto as Regulation and ETFs Fuel New Wave of Adoption
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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ February 17, 2026 6:23 am