Tokenized Gold Just Survived a DeFi Stress Test — But Almost Nobody Is Actually Using It as Collateral. Here's Why That Matters

WHY IT MATTERS

Imagine you own a gold bar and want to use it as a guarantee to borrow money — that's essentially what 'using gold as collateral' means. Tokenized gold takes real physical gold and represents it as a digital token on the blockchain, so it can be used in crypto lending apps. The good news is that this system held up under pressure, like a bridge passing a weight test. The not-so-good news is that almost nobody is actually driving across that bridge yet — less than 2% of all tokenized gold is being used this way. For crypto newcomers, this story shows that while the technology to bring traditional assets like gold into DeFi is working, getting people to actually trust and use it is a whole different challenge.