How do 'Poor People's Gold' invest on the blockchain? A review of the tokenized silver assets worth paying attention to on the Gate platform

As the crypto world focuses on whether Bitcoin can break through $100,000 and the Ethereum ecosystem continues to innovate endlessly, an ancient and silent asset class is quietly reborn on the blockchain — that is, silver.

For a long time, silver has been dubbed “the poor man’s gold,” favored by the public investors for its relatively low price and its excellent hedging and anti-inflation properties. However, traditional physical silver or silver ETF investments face pain points such as storage inconvenience, high transaction costs, and liquidity fragmentation. Now, with the wave of tokenization sweeping the commodities sector, silver is entering the digital asset investor’s view in an unprecedentedly efficient, transparent, and composable manner. This article will delve into the value logic of tokenized silver and highlight some noteworthy assets in the current market.

Why Silver? — The Core Driving Force for On-Chain TradFi Assets

The integration of TradFi and the crypto world is not simply about concept replication but aims to address inherent flaws in traditional financial markets. For precious metals and other bulk commodities, tokenization brings about a fundamental transformation:

• Fragmented Ownership and Accessibility: A standard 1,000-ounce silver futures contract or a silver bar has a high entry barrier. After tokenization, investors can purchase tokens representing a small fraction of physical silver ownership, greatly lowering the investment threshold.
• 24/7 Global Liquidity: Unlike traditional exchanges that operate only during specific hours, tokenized silver can be traded around the clock on global crypto exchanges like Gate, with instant settlement.
• Transparent Auditing and Custody: Reputable tokenization projects regularly audit their reserves through third-party agencies, with on-chain issuance volumes publicly verifiable, solving potential custody and credit risks present in traditional markets.
• Composable DeFi Applications: Tokenized silver can serve as collateral, be integrated into lending, yield-generating, or used as stable assets within various DeFi protocols, creating use cases impossible in traditional sectors.

In the context of ongoing global macroeconomic uncertainties and market seeking diversified hedging tools, silver, with its dual role as a monetary and industrial asset, naturally attracts the attention of keen capital through its tokenized versions.

From Physical to Tokenized: An Overview of Noteworthy Tokenized Silver Assets

Currently, market-issued tokenized silver mainly involves anchoring physical reserves or trust shares. Here are two mainstream models and their representatives:

Assets Directly Anchored to Physical Silver

These tokens are usually issued by custodians holding large amounts of physical silver, with each token corresponding to a specific weight stored in a vault.

Representative project: PAX Gold (PAXG) — a sibling concept, primarily gold-backed, but its model can be fully replicated for silver. There are existing similar projects that 1:1 anchor physical silver reserves, provide audit reports, and allow holders to redeem physical silver under certain conditions.

Synthetic Assets Anchored to Silver ETFs

These assets are created through financial engineering, synthetically tracking the price performance of traditional silver ETFs (like SLV) on-chain, allowing crypto investors to gain exposure to traditional markets without leaving the blockchain ecosystem.

Representative project: mSLV on Mirror Protocol (or similar synthetic asset protocols). It generates a synthetic asset tracking SLV’s price through over-collateralized crypto assets. This approach does not require direct physical holdings and focuses more on financial hedging and investment.

Market Performance and Data Insights:

According to Gate market data, as of January 30, 2026, despite short-term fluctuations in the mainstream crypto markets — for example, Bitcoin (BTC) at $82,035.1 with a 24-hour change of -6.53%; Ethereum (ETH) at $2,727.94 with a change of -7.50% — tokenized precious metal assets often show different price resilience. Their price drivers are more closely linked to spot silver prices, the US dollar index, and macro inflation expectations rather than pure crypto market risk sentiment.

Data indicates that during periods of intense crypto market volatility, trading volume and holdings of some tokenized precious metals tend to rise significantly, implying that some funds are using them as temporary safe havens or portfolio stabilizers. Investors can conveniently find these assets on Gate’s spot trading market and observe their divergence from mainstream crypto asset price trends.

How to Explore Tokenized Silver Opportunities and Trade Tokenized Precious Metals on Gate

After understanding the value and opportunities of tokenized precious metals, the key question for investors is: how to participate conveniently and securely? As a leading digital asset trading platform, Gate has built a comprehensive precious metals trading matrix covering spot and derivatives, providing a seamless bridge between traditional bulk commodities and the crypto market.

• Convenient Trading Access: Users can trade related tokens (such as PAXG or potential silver-backed tokens) directly against USDT on Gate’s spot market, with an experience similar to trading any other cryptocurrency.
• Rich Product Suite: Besides spot trading, Gate may also offer related financial products or Gate Earn services, allowing holders of tokenized silver to generate additional income.
• Deep Liquidity: Leveraging its extensive user base, Gate provides ample liquidity for these relatively new real-world asset tokens, ensuring users can execute trades at fair prices quickly.

Overview of Precious Metals Trading Products on Gate

Gate offers diverse options for tokenized precious metals and industrial metals trading, mainly divided into two categories:

• Spot Trading: You can directly purchase assets like PAXG (a gold-backed ERC-20 token) with USDT on Gate’s spot market, effectively holding digital ownership of gold.
• Perpetual Contracts: This is Gate’s core product for professional and active traders. Through Gate’s USDT-denominated perpetual contracts, you can trade a basket of metals including XAUT (digital gold), XAG (silver), XAU (gold index), XPT (platinum), and even XCU (copper), XAL (aluminum), enjoying high liquidity and leverage trading (note that leverage amplifies both gains and risks).

Market Data Insights: Volatility, Liquidity, and Correlation

As of January 30, 2026, based on Gate’s perpetual contract market data, several key points are observed:

• Close Price Correlation: The price of digital gold XAUT ($5,229.6) on Gate is nearly perfectly synchronized with the spot gold price ($5,231.85/oz), and XAG ($110.99) closely tracks spot silver ($111.45/oz). This confirms the price effectiveness of mainstream tokenized assets.
• Higher Volatility and Trading Activity: Despite about -1.4% intraday decline in the spot market, XAUT and XAG on Gate’s contract market saw over -5.5% in 24-hour decline. This reflects the 24/7 trading nature of crypto markets and faster market sentiment transmission, offering more trading opportunities. The $370.58M daily trading volume of XAUT also indicates abundant market liquidity.
• Asset Performance Divergence: In a generally corrective market, different metals show varying resilience. For example, industrial copper (XCU) declined only -0.76%, much less than platinum (-9.38%) and palladium (-6.38%). This provides space for cross-commodity arbitrage or targeted allocations based on macroeconomic views (such as industrial demand or auto production).

Key Tokenized Precious Metal Contract Market Data (Gate Perpetuals):

Trading Strategy Suggestions

When trading these assets on Gate, investors can:

• Long-term Allocation: Buy PAXG or establish low-leverage long positions in the contract market, using tokenized gold and silver as “stabilizers” in their portfolios.
• Trend Trading: Use contract products combined with technical analysis and macro news (like inflation data, central bank policies) to capture bull or bear phases in precious metals.
• Hedging and Arbitrage: Exploit the high efficiency of crypto markets to find short-term price deviations between Gate and TradFi markets for arbitrage, or hedge systemic risks in digital currency portfolios.

Conclusion: The Convergence of Ancient Value and Digital Future

Silver, known as “the poor man’s gold,” is completing its “big reversal” in the digital age through tokenization. It is no longer a cumbersome asset sleeping in vaults but a digital value carrier capable of flowing freely and efficiently across the global interconnected web of value. This is not only an innovation in precious metals investment but also a microcosm of the entire TradFi asset class migrating onto the blockchain.

For investors seeking diversification, inflation hedging, or simply a modern way to hold bulk commodities, tokenized silver is undoubtedly a trend worth close attention. And all of this exploration can start from Gate, the portal connecting tradition and innovation.

In the vast universe of digital assets, ancient wisdom is being illuminated anew.