In early January 2025, the surge in gold and silver prices became the central topic in global asset markets. Multiple macro variables, liquidity expectations, and the new narrative of RWA in the crypto market combined to drive precious metal assets into an unexpectedly strong market phase. This round of pricing reassessment is reshaping the asset landscape of traditional finance and the on-chain world.

Macroeconomic Environment and Interest Rate Turning Point

● Changes in the macro interest rate path:
- Since the second half of 2024, the Federal Reserve has gradually shifted from a "higher for longer" interest rate guidance to expectations of entering a substantial rate cut phase in 2025, with the duration of the federal funds rate remaining at high levels being significantly revised downwards.
- Market pricing based on federal funds rate futures showed that the expected cumulative rate cut for the entire year of 2025 was once raised to over 100bp, pushing the risk-free interest rate center down.

● Inflation and real interest rate environment:
- In 2024, U.S. core inflation fell from its peak but remained above the long-term target of 2%, creating a combination of declining nominal rates but persistent inflation.
- Against this backdrop, the decline in real interest rates became a key driving force for the strengthening of precious metal prices, as investors reassessed the opportunity cost of "holding non-yielding assets."

● Global economic growth and safe-haven demand:
- Several European countries experienced slowing growth and even risks of technical recession in 2024, coupled with the spread of geopolitical conflicts, which increased the willingness to allocate to safe-haven assets.
- Emerging market currency volatility intensified, local currency assets came under pressure, and some sovereign and institutional funds increased their hedging allocations to dollar-denominated gold.

Under the multiple influences of interest rate expectation turning points, declining real interest rates, and rising growth and geopolitical uncertainties, gold and silver received systematic support from the macro environment, laying the foundation for subsequent price acceleration.

Capital Flows and Positioning Structure

● ETF and OTC fund allocation:
- Since the fourth quarter of 2024, major global gold ETFs have shifted from net outflows to net inflows after a long period of outflows, reflecting a reallocation by passive funds and some institutions.
- Some European and Asian pension funds and sovereign funds, under pressure from fixed income real returns, have increased the weight of gold in multi-asset portfolios, viewing it as a medium- to long-term hedging tool.

● Futures and derivatives leverage:
- COMEX gold and silver futures position data show that speculative net long positions have significantly rebounded, with leveraged funds amplifying short-term gains through sensitive bets on interest rate turning points.
- In volatility derivatives trading, the growth rate of call options transactions and positions has clearly outpaced that of put options, with skewness tilting upwards, reflecting a bet on upward tail events.

● On-chain and tokenized capital flows:
- As the tokenization scale of traditional assets like gold and government bonds expands, some on-chain funds are indirectly allocating to gold and silver-related assets through RWA Tokens, forming a linkage with the OTC spot and futures markets.
- Some DeFi protocols have introduced gold-backed collateral, promoting on-chain collateral demand and creating new transmission channels between traditional precious metal markets.

From the perspective of capital, from traditional ETFs to futures leverage, and to emerging on-chain RWA vehicles, multi-layered capital is gathering towards precious metals at different paces, making the price increase not a single-dimensional result, but rather a joint uplift from a multi-level allocation structure.

Comparison of Gold and Silver Performance

● Differences in price increase and volatility:
- From 2024 to early 2025, gold prices reached historic high ranges, with annual increases significantly above the average of the past decade.
- Silver exhibited higher beta characteristics during the same period, with phase increases greatly outperforming gold, but volatility also significantly amplified.

● Differences in asset attributes and pricing logic:
- Gold is more often viewed as a monetary attribute and safe-haven anchor, highly sensitive to changes in real interest rates, central bank gold purchases, and macro uncertainties.
- Silver possesses both precious metal and industrial metal attributes, making its price more susceptible to the cycles of manufacturing and photovoltaic industries, thus often exhibiting amplification effects when macro recovery expectations are revised upwards.

● Supply and demand characteristics in the industrial chain:
- The supply side of gold is relatively stable, with changes in new mining and recycling occurring at a steady pace, so prices are primarily driven by investment demand and monetary environment.
- Silver has a high proportion of industrial demand in fields like photovoltaics and electronics, and when green transitions and manufacturing investment expansions occur, its pricing will be influenced by inventory replenishment and changes in technological routes.

Overall, gold plays the role of a "global asset pricing anchor" in this market phase, while silver acts more like a synchronizer after leverage, providing stronger elasticity under the premise of consistent trend direction.

RWA Track and Gold and Silver Tokenization

● On-chain migration of traditional gold products:
- Tokenized gold products based on physical gold and gold bars rapidly expanded in 2024, with significant increases in market value and daily trading volume.
- These tokenized products often achieve correspondence between off-chain assets and on-chain tokens through 1:1 physical reserves + audit mechanisms, lowering the threshold for crypto users to allocate gold.

● RWA infrastructure and institutional participation:
- Several traditional financial institutions and custodians are involved in the issuance, custody, and clearing of gold and silver RWA, promoting the connection between on-chain assets and existing financial infrastructure.
- Some compliant public chains and consortium chains provide functions such as KYC/AML, compliance whitelists, and ledger audits for RWA projects, enabling institutions to confidently hold precious metal-related assets on-chain.

● Gold and silver assets in DeFi scenarios:
- Gold and silver RWA are gradually being incorporated into lending, stable yield strategies, and other DeFi protocols as collateral assets and yield bases, enhancing the sense of security for on-chain funds.
- During periods of severe volatility in the crypto market, gold and silver RWA provide relatively robust hedging and collateral options, somewhat buffering against drastic market fluctuations.

The tokenization of gold and silver is not only a technical mapping but also a deep integration of traditional "hard assets" and crypto financial logic, providing a high-quality underlying asset with long-term consensus and real demand for the RWA track.

Reflection of Gold and Silver Market Conditions on Crypto Major Assets

● Asset correlation and rotation:
- As interest rate expectations shift from rising to falling, gold, silver, and crypto assets all benefit from "asset inflation" and improved liquidity expectations.
- In the short term, the performance of gold and silver relative to crypto assets shows a phase misalignment: gold and silver are more defensive, while crypto is more aggressive, but there is a high degree of consistency in directional judgments on liquidity easing.

● Risk premium and safe-haven demand:
- When geopolitical and macro uncertainties rise, funds often first flow into traditional safe-haven assets like gold, before gradually seeking higher-yielding risk assets.
- In this process, the strong performance of gold and silver is often seen as a signal of rising systemic risk, providing the crypto market with references for risk premiums and position leverage.

● Synergistic effects of capital structure:
- Institutional investors will adjust the weights of gold, silver, and crypto assets within the same "alternative/non-traditional asset" basket in multi-asset portfolios.
- When the proportion of gold and RWA increases in the portfolio, crypto assets may face short-term weight compression, but in the medium to long term, the expansion of RWA and gold and silver tokenization will also introduce new funding channels and risk management tools to the crypto ecosystem.

Therefore, the gold and silver market conditions are not isolated from the crypto world, but rather form a complex relationship of mutual feedback and counterbalancing with major crypto assets in terms of macro liquidity, asset rotation, and risk preferences.

Bullish and Bearish Sentiment and Market Dynamics

● Bullish views and long positions logic:
- The bullish camp emphasizes:
- The interest rate cycle has shifted from tightening to easing, and the downward movement of the real interest rate center will continue to support the valuation of gold and silver.
- Geopolitical and structural inflation risks are unlikely to disappear in the short term, reinforcing gold and silver's position as long-term hedging tools.
- The expansion of the RWA track and institutional compliance participation has provided gold and silver with new on-chain demand and use cases, breaking through traditional market capacity limits.

● Bearish views and risk concerns:
- The cautious and bearish camp believes:
- If the economic soft landing is smoother and inflation continues to decline, the pace of Fed rate cuts may not meet expectations, and a rebound in real interest rates will suppress precious metal prices.
- There is a clear component of futures and leveraged funds pushing up the current gold and silver trends, and once macro expectations are corrected, it may trigger concentrated profit-taking and corrections.
- Although RWA and tokenization have prospects, their short-term scale remains limited, insufficient to fully offset the downward pressure from traditional capital outflows.

● Market sentiment and behavioral signals:
- Social media and on-chain data show that during the phase of synchronized strength in gold, silver, and RWA, FOMO sentiment and chasing behavior have significantly increased.
- The rapid rise in short-term call option premiums in the options market also reflects the amplified volatility risk brought about by rising sentiment.

In this environment of intertwined bullish and bearish sentiments, the price trends of gold and silver have become highly financialized and derivative, with sentiment and leverage being as important in the short term as the fundamentals themselves.

Outlook: Main Lines and Potential Variables for 2025

In the short term, the market will continue to focus on the actual rate cut path of the Federal Reserve in 2025, growth data from major economies, and the evolution of geopolitical events. If the pace and magnitude of rate cuts align with current easing expectations, and inflation remains moderate but not uncontrolled, gold and silver are expected to maintain strength or even continue a new high structure; at the same time, the compliance and scaling process of gold and silver RWA, as well as their collateral and settlement functions in DeFi, will determine the extent to which the on-chain world can share in the benefits of this precious metal bull market. For the crypto market, gold, silver, and RWA are not just "bystander assets," but may become core variables in the next phase of multi-asset portfolio and capital structure reshaping.

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