A new research report jointly released by the World Gold Council and Boston Consulting Group states that the digital gold market currently stands at US$45 billion to US$55 billion and could unlock up to US$700 billion in potential demand in the future.
The report shows there is substantial untapped investment intent among individual investors, with nearly 90% of respondents saying they would consider allocating to digital gold if conditions were suitable.
The US$700 billion market opportunity is the total potential demand calculated in the report, meaning the demand that could be released once current barriers to the adoption of digital gold are removed, rather than a short-term market forecast.
The report's five-year base-case scenario projects that the digital gold market could grow at an average annual rate of about 27%, reaching US$160 billion to US$170 billion by 2031.
If more barriers are removed more quickly, the market could climb to US$270 billion to US$280 billion over the same period.
Financial markets are undergoing a comprehensive digital transformation, tokenized investment products are increasingly entering the mainstream, and the momentum behind digital gold continues to strengthen.
The digital gold market is divided into two major categories: tokenized gold and vaulted digital gold.
Since late 2024, the market value of tokenized gold has grown fivefold to about US$6 billion; in the first quarter of 2026, cumulative spot trading volume in tokenized gold surpassed US$90 billion, exceeding the level for all of 2025.
What holds investors back from entering the digital gold market is not a lack of interest, but four key obstacles: trust, access, use cases, and cost.
Among these, trust is the key determining factor. Investors believe that strengthening investor protection, providing transparent proof of physical gold backing, establishing convenient redemption channels, and further clarifying regulatory rules are the most important conditions for enhancing their confidence in digital gold.
Access is another obstacle that urgently needs to be addressed. In markets such as China, India, and Indonesia, digital gold is sold through widely familiar channels such as super apps, payment platforms, and bank apps, and the share of local digital gold investors can be as much as seven times higher than in less developed markets.
Addressing these obstacles is expected to expand the overall size of the gold market, rather than merely redistributing existing demand.
About 65% of potential demand comes from groups that have not yet allocated to gold. Among existing digital gold investors, 52% had never held any gold assets before making their first digital gold purchase; of those, 92% subsequently bought other gold categories.
This result confirms the report's core judgment: digital gold can serve as an entry point for investors into the broader gold market.
Even taking into account that some investors may shift from other gold investment products to digital gold, the base-case scenario projects that by 2031, digital gold could still bring about US$95 billion in new demand to the overall gold market.
Younger investors are leading this trend: awareness of digital gold is 50% among the 25 to 34 age group, compared with only 23% among those aged 55 and above.
World Gold Council CEO David Tait said: "Investors have shown strong interest in investing in digital gold, but without supporting infrastructure, that demand will be difficult to scale. This is exactly where the value of 'Gold as a Service' lies. This shared infrastructure is still under development and aims to help issuers launch digital gold products more efficiently that are both competitive in the market and compliant with regulation, providing them with gold sourcing, custody, and compliance management capabilities; without this infrastructure, issuers would need to build all of these capabilities themselves. But infrastructure alone is far from enough. To build a liquid and trustworthy market, the entire industry must also follow unified standards so that investors have full confidence in the products they buy."
Boston Consulting Group Managing Director and Partner Urs Rahne said: "We conducted this research precisely with the idea that gold has the potential to become the world's most trusted digital asset, not by setting aside its physical nature, but precisely by building on it. This research further strengthens our confidence in this huge market opportunity and gives us a clearer view of the key conditions needed to fully unlock the entire potential of the digital gold market."
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