As the market tanks, crypto's new gold rush is…gold

Source: CryptoNewsNet Original Title: As the market tanks, crypto’s new gold rush is…gold Original Link: In traditional finance, it is a truth universally acknowledged that, when the economy wobbles, investors turn to safe-haven assets like gold. Such assets have a low, or sometimes even negative, correlation to stock markets and other risk assets, and so can protect portfolios when trouble hits. Yet in decentralized finance (DeFi), for many long years, traders had no such options. When a sell-off began, the best most could do was sit out the pandemonium in stablecoins.

Crypto’s “Black Friday” on October 10, 2025 saw at least $19 billion worth of long positions wiped out in 24 hours, and things have gotten dicier since. As is usual in times of trouble, stablecoins have soaked up liquidity, with the asset class’s total market cap growing 2% to over $303 billion between the end of September and November 18. This, though, is lower than we might expect. And this is because, during this sell-off, DeFi traders had more options.

Between October 9 and October 13, the wider crypto and DeFi markets shed around 11%. However, total assets in on-chain commodities — a sector barely more than six months old — increased by around 5%. Longer-term figures are even more impressive, with on-chain commodities surging by a whopping 27% in October alone. And, notably, this surge was led by unprecedented demand for tokenized gold.