PAX Gold

Each PAXG token represents allocated physical gold held in London vaults, issued by a trust company supervised by New York's financial regulator. Allocated is the operative word: specific bars are assigned to holders rather than a general claim against a pool.

Allocated versus unallocated is the whole question

Unallocated gold is an unsecured claim against an institution — if it fails, you join the queue of creditors. Allocated gold means identified bars belong to you and sit outside the custodian's estate in an insolvency. This distinction has determined the outcome for holders in real precious-metals failures, and it is not a technicality.

Regulatory supervision, not self-attestation

The issuer operates under New York Department of Financial Services oversight, with reserve requirements, examinations and reporting. For a product whose entire value depends on metal existing where the issuer says it does, an examining regulator is materially stronger assurance than a self-published statement.

What tokenisation actually solves

Physical gold is hard to store, expensive to insure, impossible to divide and slow to move. A token transfers in seconds, splits to arbitrary precision and can serve as collateral. For anyone who wants exposure to gold rather than a relationship with a vault, this is a better instrument than a bar in a safe.

The risks are not price risk

Gold moves; that is expected and not what to analyse here. The specific risks are custodial failure, the enforceability of the allocation in the relevant jurisdiction, and the issuer's continued regulatory standing. Those are the questions, and they are answerable from public sources.

Who it suits

PAXG fits holders wanting supervised, verifiable gold exposure that moves on-chain. Anyone whose objective is holding metal with no counterparty at all should hold physical gold, which is the only version of that.