Gold surged to a record, bringing cheers to metal-backed digital tokens traditionally seen as a haven investment.
the largest gold-backed token by market cap, rose to a record high of $4,425, while PAXG (PAXG) and China’s gold (KAU) also rose, lifting the total market cap of gold-backed tokens to $4.38 billion.
“The message is clear. Investors are still hedging macro uncertainty rather than aggressively leaning into risk. That divergence continues to cloud enthusiasm for crypto even as liquidity conditions improve,” BRN head of research Timothy Misir said in an email.
Bitcoin, referred to by some supporters as digital gold, rose to $89,800, while the dollar index fell and technology shares lifted Asian stock indexes higher. In particular, heavyweight chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics won, helping to calm fears of an AI bubble. Futures tied to the S&P 500 rose about 0.3%, pointing to a positive U.S. opening on Monday.
While the rally is encouraging, a sustained recovery will require a renewed appetite for institutional investment vehicles, which currently appear to have cooled. Last week, digital asset investment products listed globally recorded a net outflow for the first time in four weeks, losing $952 million, according to data source CoinShares.
Derived insights
- Market stability has not yet triggered demand for renewed risk-taking. Futures paint a mixed picture, with BTC, ETH, HYPE and BNB seeing small increases in open interest (OI) over 24 hours. Other major cryptocurrencies have experienced capital outflows.
- BTC loans taken out with borrowed money continue to rise on Bitfinex. Historically, this has been a feature of sustained bear markets.
- BTC’s 30-day implied volatility remains stable at around 45%, pointing to dull trading as the year draws to a close.
- Ether’s 30-day implied volatility fell to 70%, the lowest since October 9.
- On the CME, open interest in BTC futures fell below 120K BTC for the first time since early 2024. It is a sign of declining institutional participation.
- BCH, SHIB, WLFI, and TON experience negative fund rates in perpetual markets, indicating a bias toward short positions. Financing rates for large companies remain mildly positive.
- On Deribit, block streams paint a mixed picture, with both BTC calls and put spreads crossing the band. In ETH’s case, traders chased calendar postings.
- Overall, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, although the put bias has weakened slightly since Friday.
Token Talk
- Curve DAO voted down a proposal to send 17.45 million CRV tokens, worth about $6.3 million, to Swiss Stake AG, a company led by Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov that handles core development for the decentralized exchange.
- The protocol’s CRV token is up around 4% in the last 24 hours, outperforming the broader crypto market. The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rose 0.35% during the same period.
- The proposal, which aimed to fund protocol development, infrastructure and security work for the 25-person team at Swiss Stake, failed with 54.46% of votes against and 45.54% in favor.
- Wallets linked to Yearn Finance and Convex Finance, two major players in decentralized finance, cast nearly 90% of the votes opposing the measure, according to on-chain data.
- Some DAO members highlighted concerns about the transparency of reporting past expenses.
- “The DAO deserves an itemized and transparent list of expenses and should not be expected to approve additional funding until this requirement is met and the community has an opportunity to openly discuss whether these expenses are reasonable,” wrote a DAO member.
