Amid Geopolitical Turmoil, Tokenized Gold Emerges Alongside Round-the-Clock On-Chain Markets

Original Article Title: Perpetually Open: Tokenized Gold & The Rise of 24/7 Onchain Markets

Original Article Author: Tanay Ved, Coin Metrics

Original Article Translation: Luffy, Foresight News

TL;DR

· Against the backdrop of escalating geopolitical tensions, Bitcoin has shown resilience, rising by about 7% since the sudden shock on February 28.

· Usage of tokenized gold products like PAXG, XAUT has significantly increased, with investors actively managing their gold exposure through on-chain and trading platform channels.

· Hyperliquid's HIP-3 perpetual futures have become a 24/7 macro risk barometer, with precious metals, energy, and stock perpetual contracts holding a significant share in total trading volume and open interest.

· Crude oil futures on Hyperliquid underwent a rapid price reassessment in response to the supply shock, demonstrating how on-chain channels lead price discovery when traditional markets are closed.

On February 28, news of a US-Israel joint strike on Iran spread globally. It was a Saturday, and traditional stock and commodity markets were closed, leaving investors unable to react to this significant geopolitical shock, which has now entered its second week.

However, from tokenized gold to oil perpetual futures, traditional macro assets and digital assets are actively trading on the blockchain. In times where macro assets are in focus, on-chain markets remain the only 24/7 open trading venue.

In this article, we will analyze tokenized gold products like PAXG, XAUT, and the on-chain activity of commodity and stock perpetual futures contracts based on HIP-3 on Hyperliquid to understand how the 24/7 market absorbs and reflects geopolitical pressures.

Market Response Under Geopolitical Pressure

Following the US-Iran conflict news, the price of gold quickly approached historical highs, while Bitcoin saw a decline. This was a typical initial shock response: gold as a safe haven asset, Bitcoin as a risk asset.

As the conflict shifted from an unforeseen event to a known risk, gold saw a slight pullback, while Bitcoin stabilized and rebounded, reapproaching $70,000 in a high-volatility environment, showing relative strength.

Performance of Bitcoin and Gold since the US-Iran conflict, data source: Coin Metrics

From March 2 to 4, the Bitcoin spot ETF continued to experience net inflows, providing support for the Bitcoin price as well. This indicates that the market sentiment is not merely risk-off but rather a more complex dynamic: Bitcoin's strength may reflect oversold recovery, technical positioning, and the willingness of investors to hold high Beta assets even in times of heightened geopolitical risks.

Tokenized Gold

During the closure of the spot and futures gold markets, PAXG and XAUT continued to trade throughout the weekend, becoming a channel for investors to gain real-time gold exposure on-chain.

Paxos Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) are tokenized gold products, with each token representing an ounce of gold issued and settled on Ethereum in ERC-20 token form. They hold a significant share of the tokenized gold market ($6.1 billion), allowing investors to access gold exposure without waiting for traditional market hours.

Tokenized gold trading volume since the US-Iran conflict, data source: Coin Metrics

In 2026, geopolitical and macro risks continued to intensify: the arrest of Venezuelan President Maduro, tariff uncertainties, escalating conflicts in the Middle East, etc., driving a significant surge in gold demand.

In early February, the total trading volume of tokenized gold spot on major centralized exchanges exceeded $1.8 billion; during the escalation of tensions in Iran, Israel, and the US, the volume surpassed $1 billion again. Ethereum on-chain trading volume also exceeded $1.4 billion twice, with XAUT issued by Tether accounting for the majority of the activity.

Active addresses and transaction counts saw synchronized growth, indicating a continuous rise in market demand for on-chain gold uses, including hedging, wealth preservation, DeFi collateral, and DEX liquidity pools.

HIP-3 Perpetual Futures on Hyperliquid

Likewise, on-chain perpetual futures on Hyperliquid have also become a key trading avenue. This is thanks to Hyperliquid's HIP-3 market: this protocol allows anyone to create perpetual futures for any asset permissionlessly (with just a 500,000 HYPE collateral), providing a reliable price feed including crude oil, gold, silver, stock indices, and more, running 24/7/365 with no expiration date.

The major deployers include Trade [XYZ] (offering perpetuals on US stocks and commodities) and Ventuals (offering pre-IPO equities and alternative assets like Anthropic, SpaceX).

Year-to-date Hyperliquid HIP-3 perpetual contract trading volume, data source: Coin Metrics

The total trading volume in the HIP-3 market has now surpassed $95 billion, with open interest recently hitting a record high of $12 billion, accounting for about 20% of Hyperliquid's total open interest. Non-crypto assets such as crude oil, gold, silver, and stocks occupy a significant portion, with precious metals and energy-related perpetual contracts contributing billions in daily trading volume and increasing open interest.

This growth marks the platform's transition from a niche DeFi venue to a 7×24 trading platform for traditional markets, earning an increasing amount of protocol fee revenue from non-crypto markets.

Commodity Boom Emerges

In HIP-3, based on cumulative trading volume up to 2026, the largest markets have gradually shifted towards commodities. Silver and gold perpetual contracts lead by a significant margin among Real World Asset (RWA) contracts, followed by crude oil (CL-USDC). With concerns of supply disruptions due to Middle East conflicts, the crude oil contract ranking continues to rise.

Top 10 markets by trading volume in 2026 on Hyperliquid HIP-3, data source: Coin Metrics

The average trade sizes of these markets are still relatively small compared to institutional futures, but quite significant for on-chain platforms dominated by retail traders:

· Gold Perpetual Swap 2700

· Silver Perpetual Swap

·  3400 US Dollar Crude Oil

· CL around 2800 US Dollars

· XYZ100 (Nasdaq 100) around 1100 US Dollars

How is Crude Oil Priced when Traditional Markets are Closed?

Hyperliquid has launched multiple perpetual futures contracts pegged to crude oil, including WTI Crude Oil (CL), Brent Crude Oil (BRENTOIL), U.S. Crude Oil Index (USOIL), etc., each tracking different benchmark oil prices. These contracts trade 24/7 on the on-chain order book, using stablecoins (USDC/USDH) for margin and settlement.

Each type of crude oil is its own market with independent liquidity, funding rates, and index sources, so even though they all reference crude oil, there may be slight price differences.

Crude Oil Futures Prices, data source: Coin Metrics

When the U.S. launched attacks on Iranian facilities, disrupting supply routes and causing concerns over the Strait of Hormuz, traditional futures markets were closed, while on-chain crude oil perpetual contracts completed a price reassessment within minutes.

From the 1-minute candlestick chart, it is evident that Hyperliquid's CL-USDC contract accurately reflected the oil price in real-time during the weekend, surging to $109 at one point until traditional markets reopened. During the same period, the market's open interest and trading volume rose to around $175 million and $1.9 billion, making it the second-largest market by volume on the platform, surpassing Ethereum perpetual contracts. Traders used it to express their views on the supply shock.

Trading Volume and Open Interest of WTI Crude Oil Futures on Hyperliquid, data source: Coin Metrics

Stock Exposure

While most of the funds flowed into commodities during this period, HIP-3 also offers perpetual contracts pegged to stock indices and individual stocks, allowing traders to go long or short on stocks around the clock.

The trading volume of these markets is still lower than that of crude oil and precious metals, but it aligns with HIP-3:

· Gold and oil for direct macro hedging

· Stock contracts for risk preference allocation independent of crypto price fluctuations

Several exchanges, including Kraken, are also moving in a similar direction, offering tokenized stocks and perpetual futures based on these tokens to achieve 24-hour stock exposure.

Conclusion

Recent geopolitical conflicts have allowed us to glimpse the practical application of round-the-clock on-chain finance, albeit with limited visibility but highly inspiring. During periods when traditional markets are closed, crypto infrastructure has supported the trading of tokenized gold and perpetual futures, demonstrating that blockchain, even in its early stages, with relatively small scale and constrained by liquidity and regulatory uncertainties, can serve as a round-the-clock market infrastructure.

Platforms like Hyperliquid and various tokenized asset products indicate that this infrastructure is expanding from pure crypto exposure to areas such as precious metals, energy, stocks, pointing towards a future where one of the core features of the global market will be on-chain round-the-clock trading of macro assets.

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