Recently, I noticed that a leading platform has launched a TradeFi gold trading product, and this new approach is completely different from the previous PAXG.

What’s the key difference? Previously, PAXG essentially involved trading gold tokens, with the price anchored to physical gold. But this time, XAU uses a comprehensive gold index pricing — in simple terms, an index that is weighted and averaged from the prices of multiple gold markets in the traditional market.

What does this mean? You are no longer trading a single asset, but rather the price trend of the entire gold market. The most immediate benefit is that the frequent price fluctuations, like the sudden spikes and dips seen with PAXG, are theoretically reduced. After all, the index price is calculated from multiple markets, and the influence of volatility in any single market is diluted.

For those looking to allocate crypto gold assets but worried about liquidity traps, this kind of index-based product indeed addresses some pain points.