Gold's rally is spilling into crypto markets, with tokenized gold assets recording their highest volumes and largest institutional transfers in weeks as investors seek onchain safe-haven exposure.
Physical gold climbed to $5,394 per ounce on Monday — a one-month high — as U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran triggered a flight to safety across global markets. The move extended gold's 65% gain in 2025.
Whale Accumulation
Onchain data shows significant rotation into gold-backed tokens. Analytics firm Lookonchain identified an inactive wallet that deployed $1 million USDC into PAX Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUt), with $4 million in stablecoins still on the sidelines.
A wallet(0x1C70) that had been inactive for 5 months just spent 1M $USDC to buy $PAXG and $XAUT in the past 5 hours.
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 2, 2026
The wallet still holds 4M $USDC and may buy more. https://t.co/Qg4JjsLKrB pic.twitter.com/hvldSw8kiC
"The wallet still holds 4M USDC and may buy more," Lookonchain noted.
Separately, an Ethereum whale swapped 1,000 ETH — worth $1.94 million — into XAUT at $5,413 per token, accepting a realized loss of over $60,000 to exit the position.
A whale swapped 1,000 $ETH ($1.94M) for 358.49 $XAUT at a price of $5,413, facing a loss of over $60K.
— Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens) March 2, 2026
Over the past 2 years, the whale received 1,645 $ETH for $3.26M and still holds 645 $ETH ($1.25M).
Address: 0x744b0b1c4132d79ec106cb62c630d961c4a0d849 pic.twitter.com/MvhYl2AjGJ
Institutional Flows
London-based Abraxas Capital Management received 28,723 XAUT tokens, valued at approximately $151 million, directly from Tether's treasury — the largest XAUT transfer recorded in the past three weeks, according to Arkham Intelligence data.
"Heka Funds (Abraxas Capital) is one of Tether's largest and most important institutional clients," one analyst noted. "At one point, it held 1.5% of the total USDT supply."
Market Snapshot
The tokenized gold sector's market capitalization now exceeds $6 billion. Daily trading volumes for both PAXG and XAUT surpassed $1 billion on Monday, according to CoinGecko — a sharp increase from typical activity levels.
As of press time, PAXG traded at $5,380 (-0.33% in 24 hours), while XAUt traded at $5,334 (+0.17% in 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin traded near $68,354, up roughly 2.72% over 24 hours, while Ethereum and Solana also posted gains in a similar range.
