Tokenized gold is becoming productive collateral in crypto lending, Arch says

Tokenized gold has moved deeper into crypto lending after Aave’s XAUT-backed debt reached a $25 million ceiling and Arch Lending added loans against the two largest gold tokens. Summary Aave’s $25 million XAUT debt ceiling was fully used before additional capacity filled within 24 hours. Arch’s Himanshu Sahay said investors increasingly want to use tokenized gold instead of passively holding it. Arch now accepts PAXG and XAUT as collateral for loans at up to 75% LTV. Borrowers retain their gold exposure but face interest, liquidation, custody, and issuer risks. Arch co-founder and chief technology officer Himanshu Sahay told crypto.news that demand for tokenized gold loans shows holders are beginning to treat the assets as usable parts of the digital financial system, rather than only as a way to track bullion prices. “The most interesting thing about the demand we’re seeing around tokenized gold is that people aren’t just treating these assets as a way to get exposure to the price of gold. They’re increasingly looking at them as something that can be put to work within the broader crypto financial system.” Demand recorded on Aave provides one example. In late January, the decentralized lending protocol’s XAUT market reached its $25 million debt ceiling, according to a Chaos Labs assessment. Chaos Labs recommended raising the ceiling to $30 million after finding demand to use XAUT as collateral for stablecoin borrowing. Within days, the risk manager reported that the added capacity had filled in less than 24 hours and proposed staged increases to $36 million, $43 million, and eventually $50 million. Aave demand has tested tokenized gold lending capacity Although the Aave activity showed that investors were willing to borrow against tokenized bullion, Chaos Labs found that the market was highly concentrated. Its February assessment said the largest position accounted for more than 75% of all debt secured by XAUT. The same report described the users’ health factors as moderately safe and cited XAUT’s liquidity and relatively conservative volatility when assessing liquidation risk. Aave listed XAUT in isolation mode, preventing holders from using the asset to borrow more volatile tokens. Initial parameters allowed users to borrow up to 70% of their XAUT collateral’s value, while liquidation could begin at 75%. The arrangement treated XAUT as collateral only, meaning users could supply it to support debt but could not borrow the gold token itself. You might also like: UK FCA prepares tokenized gold framework with major banks Sahay described the January activity as more meaningful than a one-time jump because the extra capacity was also used quickly. According to him, the demand indicates that “the collateral itself is becoming useful.” Current balances require a separate reading from the January episode.