The World Gold Council plans to launch a tokenized gold framework to challenge Tether and Paxos.

PANews reported on March 20th that, according to Decrypt, the World Gold Council, founded in 1987, is collaborating with the Boston Consulting Group to propose a "Gold as a Service" framework. This framework aims to establish standards for tokenized gold, challenging crypto-native issuers such as Tether Gold and PAX Gold. The service will provide a shared network enabling companies issuing tokenized gold to access a unified platform to manage physical reserves, enhance trust through continuous auditing, and establish fungibility between products.

The tokenized gold market, currently dominated by Paxos and Tether, has a total market capitalization of approximately $4.9 billion, with each having established its own independent custody and issuance system. The World Gold Council launched the first physical gold ETF in the United States, SPDR Gold Shares, in 2004, which currently has a market capitalization of $126 billion. The council states that the new service could lower the entry barrier for issuers and is expected to spawn hundreds of tokenized gold products.