Listed below are the issuers — and the custodial arrangements behind them — for physically-backed metal investment vehicles. Two formats: exchange-traded funds (ETFs) holding allocated metal in regulated vaults, and on-chain real-world-asset (RWA) tokens redeemable for or fully reserved by physical metal. Each entry cites the issuer's own product page. This is a factual issuer directory; it does not include futures-based or miner-equity ETFs, which are a different exposure class. For a step-by-step buyer's guide, see How to tokenize.
Alphabetical by ticker. Each ETF holds allocated, segregated bars or plates in named vaults; bar lists are published periodically by the sponsor.
Alphabetical by symbol. On-chain instruments backed by allocated physical metal in named vaults; reserve attestations published by the issuer or its auditor.
ETF tokens and on-chain metal tokens depend on oracle feeds for NAV updates and proof-of-reserve attestation.
SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) discloses two custodians rather than one: HSBC Bank plc and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. jointly hold the Trust's gold, with custody agreements specifying that all gold is held in allocated form at the end of each business day, and each custodian publishes its own separate gold bar list on the sponsor's website (SPDR Gold Shares, Charts, Data and Downloads). Bureau Veritas Commodities UK Ltd. (formerly Inspectorate International) conducts two counts per year — an annual full count and a separate random-sample count — at each custodian's vaults, with results published as Inspection Certificates alongside the bar list (SPDR Gold Shares, Ticker 2840 disclosure page). iShares Silver Trust (SLV) uses a single named custodian, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., London branch, with The Bank of New York Mellon acting as trustee; JPMorgan's own London and New York vaults, plus a Brink's London sub-custody arrangement, hold the physical silver (iShares Silver Trust, Form 10-K). A May 2026 Bureau Veritas inspection letter documents the granularity of these counts directly: a full count of 523,802 silver bars as of 27 February 2026, comprising 435,905 bars (422,999,596.00 gross troy ounces) at JPMorgan's London vault and 87,897 bars (88,168,893.500 gross troy ounces) at its New York vault, with every bar confirmed present against the Trust's stated records (iShares Silver Trust, Bureau Veritas Inspection Letter UKWPM-26-00662). SLV's own prospectus is explicit that the custodian's inspection checks weight, fineness marks, and bar numbers against the bar list but does not include chemical assay testing to independently verify purity, relying instead on the London Good Delivery chain of custody established when the bar was first refined (iShares Silver Trust, Prospectus).
Global gold ETF trading volumes hit an all-time high of 4,145 tonnes traded in January 2026, surpassing the prior record set in 2020, according to World Gold Council data cited in contemporaneous market coverage (Kitco News, citing World Gold Council ETF flow data). The World Gold Council's own monthly Gold ETF Flows series — the OTSFA reference for holdings and flow data across the category — tracks this trajectory in successive published reports (World Gold Council, Gold ETF Flows, March 2026 report; World Gold Council, Gold ETF Flows, April 2026 report). That momentum reversed sharply by mid-year: gold-backed ETFs recorded net outflows of 16 metric tonnes in May 2026, with the bleed continuing into the first half of June, even as central-bank gold buying continued on a separate track (GoldSilver, 298 Tonnes of ETF Gold Is Underwater). The divergence between ETF redemptions and continued sovereign accumulation is precisely the kind of structural signal the World Gold Council's dedicated ETF flows dataset is designed to isolate, since it reports holdings and flows separately by region and fund rather than blending ETF activity with OTC or central-bank demand (World Gold Council, Gold ETF: Stock, Holdings and Flows dataset).
The defining structural feature separating physical ETFs from tokenized alternatives is where the audit trail lives: GLD's and SLV's bar lists and inspection certificates are filed as exhibits to SEC periodic reports and cross-referenced against custodian-specific bar lists published directly on the sponsor's site, meaning the chain of custody is anchored in securities law disclosure obligations rather than a private attestation contract (SPDR Gold Trust, Form 10-K, Custodian disclosure). This filing-based model is why ETF sponsors can be forced, by regulatory requirement rather than choice, to disclose custodian identity changes, sub-custodian arrangements, and count methodology in a standardized document format auditable by any market participant — a structural contrast with token issuers, whose attestations (discussed in Section 2) are contractual undertakings rather than statutory filings.
PAX Gold (PAXG), issued by Paxos Trust Company — a limited-purpose trust company chartered by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and separately subject to OCC oversight for its national trust functions — represents one fine troy ounce of allocated London Good Delivery gold held in Brink's London vaults (Paxos, Pax Gold (PAXG)). Paxos publishes monthly attestation reports on its transparency page, with KPMG LLP providing attestations under AICPA standards since 28 February 2025, confirming that circulating token supply matches allocated bar inventory (Paxos, Pax Gold (PAXG) Transparency Reports). Uniquely among tokenized commodities, Paxos also operates a public Gold Allocation Lookup Tool letting any holder enter a wallet address or transaction hash and retrieve the specific bar serial number, purity, vault location, and weight backing their tokens — a bar-list-equivalent disclosure mechanism built for individual retail verification rather than aggregate fund-level reporting (Paxos, PAXG Transparency Reports). Reserves undergo a separate annual physical audit by Bureau Veritas — the same inspection firm used by GLD and SLV — layering an independent physical count on top of the monthly KPMG attestation cycle (Raptor Group, Paxos: Bringing PAXG to Solana).
Tether Gold (XAUT), issued by TG Commodities S.A. de C.V. within the Tether corporate group, represents one troy ounce of London Good Delivery gold held primarily in Swiss vaults, with BDO Italia providing quarterly limited-assurance attestations under ISAE 3000 standards. Tether's own January 2026 announcement stated that XAUT's value had surpassed $4 billion, accounting for more than half of the entire gold-backed stablecoin market by value (Tether.io, Tether Gold Accounts for More Than Half the Entire Gold-Backed Stablecoin Market). By February 2026, market data aggregated on CoinMarketCap showed circulating XAUT supply had grown to over 712,000 ounces, up from roughly 246,000 ounces a few years prior, with a market capitalization of approximately $2.22 billion at a price near $4,697 in mid-January 2026 (CoinMarketCap, Tether Gold (XAUT) market data). Trading intensity spiked further into March 2026, when XAUT recorded a single-day perpetual futures volume of $6.40 billion on Binance on 23 March 2026, according to CryptoQuant data cited in trade press, though that figure reflects derivatives activity rather than direct spot purchases of the underlying token (TradingView News, Over $6B: XAUT Futures Volume Rewrites Records on Binance).
Aggregated CoinGecko data covering fifteen months of activity shows PAXG and XAUT together dominating tokenized-gold spot volume, with PAXG's monthly share ranging from 34.2% to 82.5% and XAUT's from 14.8% to 64.6%; average monthly spot trading volumes stood at $5.72 billion for PAXG and $5.32 billion for XAUT, against an overall category average of $11.69 billion per month, while smaller entrants — Kinesis Gold (KAG) averaging $0.57 billion, Tether's omnichain XAUT0 deployment at $0.10 billion, and XAUM at just $0.007 billion — remain a distant tail (BeInCrypto, Tokenized Gold Crosses 2025's Full-Year Volume in Just One Quarter). Total Q1 2026 tokenized-gold spot trading reached $90.7 billion, already exceeding the $84.64 billion recorded across the whole of 2025, according to the same CoinGecko-sourced reporting (Phemex News, Tokenized Gold Trading Volume Surpasses 2025 Total in Q1 2026).
Under MiCA (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114) Article 3(1)(6), an asset-referenced token (ART) is defined as a crypto-asset that is not an e-money token and that purports to maintain a stable value by referencing any other value or right — including one or more commodities — rather than a single official currency; PAX Gold and Tether Gold are the explicit worked examples cited by supervisory guidance as commodity-backed ARTs precisely because they reference physical gold rather than a fiat currency (Eco, MiCA EMTs vs ARTs Explained). The European Banking Authority (EBA) holds direct supervisory responsibility over issuers once a token crosses defined significance thresholds under Article 43 — at least three of: a holder base above 10 million, a reserve above €5 billion, daily EU transaction volume above €500 million, daily transaction count above 2.5 million, use as a means of payment above 1 million transactions per day, or material interconnection with the financial system (European Banking Authority, EBA's Supervisory Role under MiCA). For commodity-backed ARTs specifically, EBA-aligned guidance requires the underlying commodity to be held with a regulated custodian, with daily inventory reconciliation and quarterly third-party physical audit — explicitly citing PAXG's LBMA-vaulted, serial-number-tracked model as the reference custody structure any commodity-backed ART issuer must replicate to obtain authorization (Eco, MiCA Reserve and Authorization Rules).
Any legal person seeking to issue an ART to the public in the EU must obtain authorization from the competent authority of its home member state under Article 21, or, if a credit institution, follow the simplified notification path under Article 17, in either case submitting an approved crypto-asset white paper before public offering (CSSF, Issuers of Asset-Referenced Tokens (ARTs)). Own-funds requirements are calibrated to the greatest of €350,000, 2% of the average reserve (rising to 3% for significant ARTs), or a quarter of the prior year's fixed overheads, held in addition to — not as part of — the segregated reserve itself (Finconduit, Issuing an ART Under MiCA Title III: 2026 Guide). Reserve assets must be fully segregated from the issuer's own balance sheet and, under Article 47, are excluded from the issuer's insolvency estate in the event of failure, made available for redemption ahead of other creditors (Eco, MiCA Reserve and Authorization Rules). As of 30 June 2024, any ART or EMT offered to the public or admitted to trading within the EU must be authorized under MiCA, with crypto-asset service providers required to restrict services facilitating acquisition of non-compliant tokens after a transitional sell-only window that closed 31 March 2025 (Lexters, ARTs and EMTs Status under MiCA — EBA No-Action Letter and Compliance Deadlines).
Hong Kong's HashKey Exchange positioned itself in early 2026 as a compliant distribution venue for existing tokenized-gold products rather than an issuer, launching licensed XAUT over-the-counter trading on 15 January 2026 — described as the first compliant gold-token trading available on a licensed Hong Kong exchange — available to professional investors through its Marketplace OTC platform (MEXC, HashKey Launches XAUt Trading, Marking the First Time a Compliant Gold Token Trades on a Licensed HK Exchange). A promotional access campaign let users acquire small XAUT allocations from roughly $100, with early flow data showing $401.5 million in leveraged futures volume against $36.7 million in spot volume within the first 24 hours — open interest of $466.7 million signalling predominantly speculative rather than long-term-holding demand for the newly listed access route (AInvest, HashKey's Gold Token Launch: Flow Analysis of a $100 Promotional Offer). By contrast, Backed Finance, headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, issues its tokenized real-world-asset suite — including commodity- and equity-tracking tokens — under Switzerland's Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Act framework, describing each token as 1:1 backed by the underlying asset, held with third-party licensed custodians, and redeemable for the underlying asset's cash value (Backed Finance, Tokenized Assets). Backed's institutional tokenization platform, launched in December 2025, extends this same Swiss structured-product model to a broader roster of tokenized securities, positioning the firm as a Swiss-regulated alternative to the US-trust-company (Paxos) and Tether-group (XAUT) issuance models that dominate the gold-token category specifically (Backed Finance, Backed Launches Tokenization Platform for Institutions).