When it comes to tokenized gold, many people only see the convenience, but the risks really need to be spelled out.

First, the centralization issue—are the piles of gold behind the tokens you buy really sitting in a vault? That depends on the issuer’s audit reports, which, honestly, is just a “game of trust.” If the other party is playing tricks, the tokens in your hand might just be a string of numbers.

Regulation is even trickier. Right now, countries are still unclear about how to define these assets. Today it’s considered a commodity; tomorrow it might be classified as a security. If policies change, liquidity and trading rules could all be reshuffled.

There are also technical pitfalls: if a smart contract’s code has vulnerabilities, hackers can siphon off assets in minutes. Several DeFi projects fell victim to this just last year.

The biggest worry is counterparty risk—if the issuer goes bankrupt or runs off, token holders are basically unsecured creditors and may not even get in line for compensation. #比特币对比代币化黄金 -type decentralized assets at least don’t have this particular risk.

So before allocating to this kind of product, you need to carefully consider: do you trust this issuer, and can you bear these structural risks?