Recently, something quite interesting happened in the crypto circle—Bhutan, this small country at the foot of the Himalayas, suddenly announced it will issue an official gold token, TER.

Why is this worth mentioning? Because it might be the world's first gold token truly endorsed by a sovereign nation.

In the past, gold tokens like PAXG and XAUT we’ve encountered were essentially issued by private institutions. Although they claim to be 1:1 backed by gold reserves, they are still private operations, and the risk of de-pegging always exists—just like USDT, no matter how big it gets, theoretically, it can still decouple from the dollar.

But Bhutan’s case is different this time. The government directly issued the token, effectively collateralizing the country’s credit. This level of endorsement is roughly equivalent to the USD-to-dollar relationship—unless the country goes bankrupt, the peg is unlikely to break.

Coincidentally, a major exchange almost simultaneously launched gold perpetual contracts (XAUUSDT). The timing was quite precise.

In the current market environment, BTC is highly volatile, and altcoins are even more so. Many people are turning their attention to traditional safe-haven assets like gold. But actually buying physical gold or PAXG? That price point isn’t affordable for everyone.

Gold contracts just happen to solve this pain point—leveraging gold prices with much lower barriers. Especially with the recent steady rise in gold prices, these contracts indeed provide a new flow of funds.

On a side note, while some public chains are still researching private fund on-chain solutions, others are already laying out gold contracts or even rumored to connect to US stock APIs. The gap in this pace is quite obvious.

In the long run, if tokenizing gold really works out, it will be a positive for the stability of the entire crypto market. After all, with physical assets backing it, market confidence will be much stronger than relying solely on narratives.

Of course, this is just the beginning. Future issues like regulation, cross-border circulation, and audit transparency still need to be gradually addressed. But at least the direction is correct— the crypto world is trying to deeply integrate with traditional financial assets.