Tokenized gold, such as Tether’s XAUT and Paxos’ PAXG continued to be a favorite of crypto investors in Asia as investors seek a safe haven despite a de-escalation in trade war tensions.

On-chain data shows that Tether’s XAUT was a top-10 market performer out of all digital assets. Tether’s tokenized gold, the largest by market cap, is up 3.4% in the last 24 hours.

CoinGecko data shows the sector is up 4.3% in the last 24 hours, compared to the CoinDesk 20, an index of the performance of the largest digital assets, which is down 2%.

The price of gold initially moved down during the early hours of the Asia trading day, after breaching an all-time high during the end of U.S. hours. It’s currently trading for $3218 in Hong Kong.

Equity markets in Asia showed mixed performance in the morning session, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down 0.2%, Shanghai’s SSE up 0.12%, Taipei’s TAIEX up 1.6%, and Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 down 3.5%.

Gold typically rallies during periods of heightened economic or geopolitical uncertainty, as investors seek safety in assets seen as stores of value amid volatility. While trade tensions have calmed, investors are concerned about the lack of predictability in policy from the White House.

Gold also benefits from an inverse relationship with interest rates: lower rates reduce the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding gold, making it more attractive.

Investors are also concerned about the surging U.S. budget deficit.

China state media is also reporting that stimulus measures are in the works for the country, with interest rate cuts and government spending to the tune of $136 billion proposed.

Other market leaders include Curve DAO’s CRV, up 18% on-day after news that the U.S. plans to significantly relax rules and enforcement pertaining to Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

For years, Wall Street criticized bitcoin (BTC) for its volatility, but the situation has dramatically changed as President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policies diminish the appeal of U.S. assets.

Since Trump’s Liberation Day tariff announcement on April 2, the seven-day realized volatility of the S&P 500, Wall Street’s benchmark equity index, has surged from an annualized 50% to 169%, according to data from TradingView. That’s the highest level since the coronavirus crash in 2020.

BTC’s seven-day realized volatility has doubled to 83%, yet it remains significantly lower than the S&P 500, hinting at the cryptocurrency’s possible evolution as a low-beta hedge against stocks. The cryptocurrency also looks significantly less volatile than the S&P 500 on a 30-day basis.

«Equity markets [have] experienced a dramatic spike in volatility—surpassing that of Bitcoin, which is currently seeing a decline in volatility. This raises the question: should investors place their trust in assets that are highly susceptible to political influence and human error, or in a mathematical framework and emerging store of value that is more resilient to such risks?» CoinShares’ Head of Research James Butterfill said in an email.

Investors dump U.S. assets

The S&P 500 has cracked 14% in less than two months, largely due to trade war fears that have recently come true. The tech-heavy Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average have suffered similar losses alongside increased volatility in global equity markets.

Risk aversion of such magnitudes has historically seen investors park money in Treasury notes, which underpin the global financial system, and the U.S. dollar, the global reserve currency.

But since last Friday, investors have aggressively dumped Treasury notes, driving yields higher, and the dollar index has tanked. The so-called benchmark 10-year bond yield has surged by 62 basis points to 4.45% since last Friday and the dollar index, which tracks the greenback’s value against major currencies, has extended its first quarter swoon to 100, the lowest level since late September.

Currencies typically appreciate when their national bond yields rise unless markets are worried about the country’s debt situation, in which case investors pull money out of the bond markets, leading to a spike in yields and a concurrent currency depreciation. The Global South witnessed this in 2018.

«Yields higher, currency lower is common in EM. We saw this in the UK during the Truss debacle. But it is highly abnormal for the US: there are only four other episodes in the last 30 years in which the dollar depreciated more than 1.5% with the 30-year yield up more than 10bp,» Evercore ISI said, according to Wall Street Journal’s Chief Economic Correspondent Nick Timaros.

«It reflects evaporating US growth exceptionalism and the reduced attraction at the margin of dollar assets for reserve purposes amid erratic US decision-making,» Evercore added.

Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have jointly requested a pause in their respective appeals to finalize a potential settlement, per a motion filed on Thursday.

The filing signals a possible end to a high-profile dispute that has gripped the payments upstart industry since December 2020 for its sale of XRP tokens, which the SEC alleged were unregistered securities.

The case has been a focal point for debates over the regulatory status of cryptocurrencies in the United States, with Ripple arguing that XRP is a currency, not a security, and thus outside the SEC’s jurisdiction.

Ripple and the SEC have reached an “agreement in principle” to resolve all outstanding issues, per a post shared by attorney James Filan.

This includes not only the SEC’s appeal of the district court’s final judgment but also Ripple’s cross-appeal and the claims against Ripple founders Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen.

The motion requests that the court hold the appeals process in abeyance — effectively pausing it — while the parties hammer out the final terms of the settlement, which still requires formal approval from the SEC’s commissioners.

This follows a similar request from the SEC and Gemini in early April, where the two parties requested the court approve a two-month pause to finalize a deal to close their long-running legal dispute over Gemini’s Earn program.