Crypto Markets Today: Gold tokens shine as bitcoin rises to $89,000

Markets

Share

Share this article

Copy linkX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmail

Crypto Markets Today: Gold tokens shine as bitcoin rises to $89,000

By Omkar Godbole, Francisco Rodrigues|Edited by Sheldon Reback

Dec 22, 2025, 11:35 a.m.

Gold-backed tokens rose to record highs. (Jingming Pan/Unsplash modified by CoinDesk)

What to know:

• Gold-backed tokens like Tether Gold (XAUT) have reached record highs, reflecting the surge in gold prices.
• Bitcoin rose to $89,800 as the dollar index dropped and technology stocks rose.
• Curve DAO rejected a proposal to allocate 17.45 million CRV tokens for development, citing concerns over transparency.

Gold surged to record, bringing cheer to digital tokens backed by the metal traditionally seen as a haven investment.

XAUT$4,411.91, the largest gold-backed token by market value, rose to an all-time high of $4,425 while PAXG (PAXG) and kineses gold (KAU) also rose, lifting the total market value of gold-backed tokens to $4.38 billion.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW

Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters

Sign me up

By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.

"The message is clear. Investors are still hedging macro uncertainty rather than leaning aggressively into risk. That divergence continues to cap enthusiasm for crypto, even as liquidity conditions improve," BRN's head of research Timothy Misir, said in an email.

Bitcoin, referred to by some followers as digital gold, rose to $89,800 while the dollar index dropped and technology stocks lifted Asian equity indexes higher. Notably, heavyweight chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics gained, helping calm fears of an AI bubble. Futures tied to the S&P 500 advanced roughly 0.3%, pointing to a positive U.S. open on Monday.

While the price uptick is encouraging, a sustained recovery will require a renewed appetite for institutional investment vehicles, which currently appear to have cooled. Last week, digital asset investment products listed worldwide registered a net outflow for the first time in four week, losing $952 million, according to data source CoinShares.

Derivative insights

• Market stability has yet to galvanize demand for renewed risk taking. Futures are painting a mixed picture, with BTC, ETH, HYPE and BNB seeing small increases in open interest (OI) over 24 hours. Other major cryptocurrencies have seen capital outflows.
• BTC longs raised with borrowed money continue to rise on Bitfinex. Historically, this has been a feature of sustained bear markets.
• BTC's 30-day implied volatility remains steady at around 45%, pointing to dull trading as the year draws to a close.
• Ether's 30-day implied volatility dropped to 70%, the lowest since Oct. 9.
• On the CME, open interest in BTC futures dropped below 120K BTC for the first time since early 2024. That's a sign of dwindling institutional participation.
• BCH, SHIB, WLFI and TON are seeing negative funding rates in perpetual markets, indicating a bias for short positions. Funding rates for majors remain mildly positive.
• On Deribit, block flows paint a mixed picture, with both BTC call and put spreads crossing the tape. In ETH's case, traders chased calendar spreads.
• Overall, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls, although the put bias has weakened slightly since Friday.

Token Talk

• Curve DAO voted down a proposal to send 17.45 million CRV tokens, worth around $6.3 million, to Swiss Stake AG, a company led by Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov that handles core development for the decentralized exchange.
• The protocol's CRV token is up around 4% in the last 24 hours, outperforming the wider crypto market. The CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rose 0.35% in the same period.
• The proposal, which aimed to fund protocol development, infrastructure and security work for the 25-person team at Swiss Stake, failed with 54.46% of votes against and 45.54% in favor.
• Wallets tied to Yearn Finance and Convex Finance, two major players in decentralized finance, cast nearly 90% of the votes opposing the measure, according to on-chain data.
• Some DAO members flagged concerns around the transparency of reporting of previous expenditures.
• “The DAO deserves an itemized and transparent list of expenses and shouldn’t be expected to authorize any more funding until this requirement is met and the community has the opportunity to openly discuss whether those expenses are reasonable,” a DAO member wrote.

Crypto Markets Todaymarket analysisCurve DAODerivatives

More For You

Protocol Research: GoPlus Security

By CoinDesk Research

Nov 14, 2025

Commissioned byGoPlus

What to know:

• As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
• GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
• Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

View Full Report

More For You

Boxing Day bonanza: $27 billion in bitcoin, ether options set for year-end reset

By Omkar Godbole|Edited by Sheldon Reback

1 hour ago

The expiration involves over 50% of Deribit's total open interest, with a bullish bias indicated by a put-call ratio of 0.38.

What to know:

• The crypto market is preparing for the expiry of $27 billion of bitcoin and ether options on Deribit on Friday.
• The expiration involves over 50% of Deribit's total open interest, with a bullish bias indicated by call options outnumbering puts by almost 3-to-1.
• The market's panic has subsided, and the looming expiry is likely to be much orderly than last year, according to Deribit.

Read full story

Latest Crypto News

Boxing Day bonanza: $27 billion in bitcoin, ether options set for year-end reset

1 hour ago

Bullish bitcoin plays on Bitfinex swell to highest since early 2024

1 hour ago

Uniswap vote, U.S. GDP: Crypto Week Ahead

2 hours ago

Uniswap token burn moves closer to reality as 99% voters favor ‘fee switch’ proposal

4 hours ago

Hong Kong proposes new rules to tap insurance capital into cryptocurrencies

4 hours ago

Binance opens up ways for users to generate income using ETH options

5 hours ago

Top Stories

Boxing Day bonanza: $27 billion in bitcoin, ether options set for year-end reset

1 hour ago

Hong Kong proposes new rules to tap insurance capital into cryptocurrencies

4 hours ago

Uniswap token burn moves closer to reality as 99% voters favor ‘fee switch’ proposal

4 hours ago

Galaxy Digital’s head of research explains why bitcoin’s outlook is so uncertain in 2026

14 hours ago

Tom Lee responds to controversy surrounding Fundstrat’s differing bitcoin outlooks

Dec 20, 2025

‘DeFi is dead’: Maple Finance’s CEO says onchain markets will swallow Wall Street

21 hours ago