Gold and silver futures have gained traction on the Binance exchange, which is widely known as the world’s biggest cryptocurrency trading platform.
Just days after launch, gold futures have already ranked 4th with a trading volume of $2.15 billion, with silver contracts immediately following at $1.98 billion.
The trading activity is centered around perpetual futures (or perps) on traditional assets. This type of derivative is the most common in the cryptocurrency market; they have no expiration date and allow for highly leveraged trading.
Geopolitical tensions and economic instability are fueling a safe-haven demand from investors, encouraging the development of derivative solutions that allow investors to gain exposure to it, such as those now offered by Binance.
Just recently, the World Gold Council (WGC) and Boston Consulting Group have proposed a creation of an open platform designed to connect physical gold custody with the digital systems used to issue and manage gold-backed products.
Partners have published a white paper named "Digital Gold: The Case for a Shared Infrastructure" and outlined a "Gold as a Service" model, which aims to standardize key processes such as custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance and redemption for better scalability and interoperability across digital gold products.
WGC said that tokenization has helped broaden access to gold, but the lack of standardization has limited the ability to integrate digital gold assets into modern financial systems.
Theodor Lisovoy, Managing Editor, Rough&Polished
