Today, we are excited to unveil a new joint report authored by the HKUST Institute for Financial Research (IFR), Matrixport, and Matrixdock.
 

The report "Tokenized Gold: Redefining Financial Infrastrucutre for the World's Oldest and Most Trusted Asset Class" led by Eva Meng, Head of Matrixdock, and Bo Tang, HKUST Institute for Financial Research, was produced in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and English. It lays out a clear and practical roadmap for how tokenized gold can evolve into a system-level building block for global finance, bridging the gap between traditional markets and blockchain-based infrastructure.

This milestone follows Matrixport’s signing of an MoU with HKUST, under which XAUm was selected as a case study for research into the future of financial infrastructure. We are proud to be at the forefront of this movement, shaping the next generation of tokenized assets and their role in global capital markets.

Who’s behind it

• HKUST Institute for Financial Research (IFR) — An interdisciplinary, international research hub connecting academia, industry, and policymakers across Hong Kong, mainland China, Europe, and the U.S., focused on rigorous, real-world solutions.
  
  

• Matrixport — Asia’s largest one-stop digital asset financial platform, offering trading, investing, lending, custody, research, and RWA access through a unified smart-account experience.
  
  

• Matrixdock — Matrixport Group’s RWA tokenization arm, behind STBT (tokenized T-bills) and XAUm (tokenized 99.99% LBMA-accredited gold), with award-winning solutions in market liquidity and transparency.
  
  

What you’ll learn (and why you’ll want to read it)

1) A realistic architecture for “New Finance.”
The report identifies four bottlenecks—silos, opacity, static assets, and lack of scalable foundational assets—and shows how tokenized gold helps unlock an interoperable, transparent, automated, and open financial network.

2) Why gold is uniquely suited to be infrastructure?
Gold’s sovereign neutrality and deep global consensus make it ideal collateral for cross-border payments, protocol reserves, and emerging-market settlement—without relying on any single nation’s credit.

3) From paper products to programmable assets.
It contrasts traditional channels (physical and ETFs) with on-chain gold that’s callable by smart contracts, composable with stablecoins and ready for AI-agent connectivity.

4) A clear, three-stage path to scale.

• Digitalization: on-chain legal finality, proof-of-reserve, and redemption rights
  

• Modularization: plug into lending, liquidity, clearing, and structured products
  

• Globalization: multichain circulation as a neutral settlement layer
  

5) Trust by design, not by promise.
A combined model, centralized vaulting + decentralized verification with independent audits, on-chain supply/reserve data, and enforceable redemption pathways.

6) What could go wrong—and how to mitigate it.
A pragmatic risk section on custodial centralization, regulation, liquidity/market integrity, tech security, and reputational transparency, with concrete controls.

7) Real-world implementation (XAUm case).
How XAUm operationalizes gold tokenization—bar-level traceability, multichain deployment, DeFi integrations, mint/burn discipline, and physical redemption mechanics—and why liquidity depth is the north star for institutional adoption.

Download your copy here: https://matrixdock.gitbook.io/matrixdock-docs/english/knowledge-hub-and-reports/hkust-matrixdock-tokenized-gold-report

It also builds on our earlier publication with the Tokenized Asset Coalition (TAC), where Matrixdock co-authored the TAC Spotlight Deep Dive on XAUm. Together, these initiatives demonstrate our continued leadership in advancing tokenized gold as both a trustworthy reserve asset and a productive on-chain instrument.