Old Metal, New Rules: How Gold Became the Smart Money Again

The scale of sovereign government demand for gold explains much of the movement. Central banks purchased roughly 244 tonnes of gold in Q1 2025, the second-highest quarterly total on record and nearly 24% above the five-year average. Poland increased its holdings to over 515 tonnes, bringing gold to around 22% of its reserve composition. Turkey added approximately 19.5 tonnes amid currency depreciation pressures. China continued to accumulate gold while reducing exposure to US Treasuries, and trading activity on the Shanghai Gold Exchange expanded significantly, creating alternative depth in global pricing mechanisms. 

This pattern reflects a shift in how reserve safety is defined. Gold carries no sovereign promise, no maturity schedule and no political jurisdiction. For reserve managers navigating a fragmented international system, these characteristics are increasingly decisive. 

Market behaviour reinforces this structural argument. S&P 500’s rolling one-year correlation with the Gold has averaged around 21%, compared with approximately 46% for Bitcoin, which has traded more like a high-beta growth asset. Gold and Bitcoin have shown only about 10% correlation with one another over the same interval, indicating that — despite the “stores of value” narrative — they respond to fundamentally different demand drivers. 

In crisis environments, gold’s history also provides evidence where Bitcoin’s remains incomplete. Across the worst one-in-twenty among the last 50 years in equity markets since the mid-1970s, the S&P 500 has declined roughly 25% while gold has delivered average gains of approximately 2%. Bitcoin has not yet experienced an equivalent breadth of monetary, geopolitical and liquidity cycles to establish comparable defensive credentials. 

Monetary policy has additionally supported gold. Since mid-2024, the Federal Reserve has cut policy rates by roughly 100 basis points, decreasing the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets. Statistical models linking gold performance to the two-year Treasury yield indicate that easing cycles tend to create favourable return environments for Gold, with roughly 48% explanatory power. 

There is also a valuation consideration. The ratio between the price of gold to CPI reached near-record levels in 2025, rising from around 8.5 to approximately 12.2 year-on-year (as of 28 October 2025). However, gold is not being valued solely as an inflation hedge in the current cycle. It is being priced as a politically neutral reserve asset in a multipolar monetary system, which changes the interpretation of valuation metrics derived from past inflation-driven cycles. 

Figure 2: Gold to CPI ratio has increased from 8.5 to 12.2 in last 1 year 

Source: TradingView

The question for investors, then, is not whether gold remains essential. It is in which format gold should be held.

Gold can be held through a range of instruments, each balancing security, liquidity and operational practicality differently. 

Physical bullion offers clear direct ownership but comes with the need for secure storage, insurance and periodic verification. It is effective for long-term wealth preservation, yet structurally unsuitable for frequent liquidity or settlement. 

Allocated gold accounts provide institutional-grade custody of specifically identified bars, fully insured and segregated, but typically involve larger minimums and less transactional flexibility. 

Unallocated accounts offer low cost and deep liquidity but represent claims on a pool of metal rather than direct title. Counterparty exposure becomes the primary risk variable. 

Gold ETFs introduced broad accessibility and exchange liquidity; however, ETF units represent financial claims, not legally owned metal. Redemption into physical form is limited and operationally complex for most holders. 

Mutual funds and structured gold investment products may track gold indirectly through miners or ETF baskets, and performance can deviate materially from spot price. 

Digital gold platforms reduce minimum investment thresholds, allowing fractional holdings, but rely on centralised custodians. Proof of reserves is typically opaque and contingent on the solvency of the issuing platform. 

Gold futures markets enable tactical exposure and hedging but rarely result in physical settlement. They serve traders rather than holders seeking reserve certainty. 

Across these formats, the pattern is consistent. Instruments offering clear ownership are operationally burdensome; instruments that are simple to use introduce layers of abstraction and counterparty reliance. 

This is the structural gap that tokenised gold addresses. 

Tokenised gold represents specific quantities of physical gold stored in regulated vaults, where ownership is recorded on a blockchain ledger. The token itself constitutes the legal title to the underlying metal. This removes the historical trade-off between custody certainty and ease of use. 

Ownership is direct rather than representational. Transfers settle globally, often within minutes. Verification does not depend on institutional reporting but on cryptographic proof and third-party audit. Fractionalisation is inherent, enabling position sizes from grams to tonnes without structural difference in integrity. 

The AMINA Gold Token (ticker: SGT) represents direct ownership of 1 gram of 100% fine gold stored at the Argor-Heraeus refinery in Switzerland. This is not a financial claim, nor a pooled entitlement. It is legally recognised co-ownership of specific physical gold, available exclusively for AMINA clients. It is recorded on-chain, with AMINA Bank, a fully licensed Swiss bank regulated by FINMA, issues, custodies and manages the tokenisation process. 

By anchoring ownership at the refinery rather than in post-refinery vault networks, SGT removes the traditional storage, handling and insurance cost structure. There is no ongoing physical storage fee. Digital custody is charged at institutional rates of approximately 0.25–0.30% per annum, depending on position size, creating a significantly lower cost of long-term ownership than conventional allocated structures or ETFs once fees are considered. 

AMINA Gold Token is accessible in USD and major G20 currencies, as well as BTC and ETH. It can be redeemed for physical delivery if required. Transfers occur through standard ERC-20 settlement rails, allowing SGT to move between traditional finance and digital asset markets with equal fluidity. 

The defining characteristic is that SGT allows gold to operate as a useful reserve instrument. It retains the wealth preservation profile of allocated bullion yet trades with the immediacy and borderlessness of digital assets. It is suitable for portfolio diversification, cross-system settlement, collateralisation, and defensive liquidity management. 

In a financial environment where sovereignty, jurisdiction and settlement infrastructure are increasingly strategic variables, SGT offers a form of gold ownership aligned with the realities of modern capital movement, rather than the operational constraints of the twentieth century bullion system. 

Gold’s role as a reserve store of value is strengthening. Tokenisation does not reinvent that role. It restores gold’s most fundamental characteristic: a neutral, portable, universally recognised asset that does not depend on the credit of any institution. 

AMINA Gold Token is gold in the form required for the financial system that is now emerging. 

The divergence between gold and Bitcoin over the past year has not been a matter of sentiment or narrative preference. It reflects a deeper reassessment of what constitutes a reliable reserve asset at a time when geopolitical alignments are shifting and the structure of the global monetary system is evolving. Central banks have made this clear through sustained and accelerating purchases. Portfolio correlations have reinforced the message. Gold continues to function as the asset investors turn to when the stability of institutions, currencies or financial systems is uncertain. 

At the same time, the way gold is held is undergoing its own transformation. Traditional forms of ownership provide security but are slow and operationally rigid. Financialised exposures offer convenience but introduce abstraction and counterparty dependence. The market has lacked a structure that combines certainty of titles with the ability to move and transact efficiently across borders and platforms. 

Tokenised gold closes that gap. It restores the sovereignty of holding physical metal while enabling settlement and transfer at the speed of modern financial systems. What is emerging is not a new asset, but a new interface for one of the oldest. Gold remains gold, but the mechanisms for accessing, storing and deploying it are becoming more aligned with the realities of contemporary capital mobility. 

In a world where resilience and flexibility are increasingly strategic requirements, the evolution of gold from static reserve to dynamic, transferable store of value marks a fundamental change in how the asset participates in portfolios and financial architecture. The asset itself has not changed. What has changed is our ability to use it.

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