PAXG vs XAUt vs KAU: Tokenized Gold, Scored

Three tokenized gold tokens on Realmint — PAX Gold (PAXG), Tether Gold (XAUt), and Kinesis Gold (KAU) — are each backed 1:1 by real LBMA London Good Delivery gold, and all three score a perfect 100 on backing. Their composite Realmint Scores still range from 81 to 90. The gap has nothing to do with the metal and everything to do with what happens when you try to leave.

Here is the scored comparison, using each token's live score and price as of July 10, 2026.

Why do all three score 100 on backing?

Because backing is where regulated gold tokens have converged. Each PAXG is one fine troy ounce on a specific 400 oz bar at Brink's in London, attested monthly by KPMG. Each XAUt is one troy ounce on a numbered LBMA bar in Switzerland, attested monthly by BDO Malta. Each KAU is one gram of 999.9 gold in the ABX vault network, with a biannual physical audit by Inspectorate International (Bureau Veritas). Different vaults, different auditors, same result: independently verified 1:1 physical gold.

That is the point most "best tokenized gold" roundups miss. If every serious token is fully backed, backing cannot be the deciding factor. The Realmint Score separates them on the dimensions that only bite once you already own the token: can you get out, and who can stop you.

Where does the score actually split?

On exit and control. Exit measures how hard it is to leave the position — to redeem or transfer. Control measures how much unilateral power the issuer keeps over your tokens on-chain, where a higher score means less issuer power. PAXG and KAU both score 95 on exit; XAUt scores 65. And every one of these issuers can freeze, blacklist, mint, and burn — so control is less about whether the power exists and more about who holds the key.

PAXG (90): the strongest legal wrapper, the weakest key

PAXG posts the highest composite for one structural reason: it is the only one of the three that is bankruptcy-remote. Paxos Trust Company holds the gold in a segregated trust under a US federal (OCC) charter, so if Paxos failed, the gold is legally yours, not its creditors'. That earns a perfect 100 on enforceability.

The catch shows up on control, where PAXG scores 0 — the worst of the three. Paxos can freeze, blacklist, mint, and burn like the others, but its admin key is a single externally-owned account (EOA), not a multisig. One key, one signer, no on-chain second approval. That single point of failure is exactly what the control dimension penalizes. It is a real, if rarely exercised, tradeoff — covered in our full PAXG breakdown.

KAU (87): the same exit as PAXG, with a multisig

Kinesis Gold matches PAXG's 95 on exit — freely transferable, redeemable from a $100 minimum at a 0.22% fee, no on-chain KYC — and beats it where it counts on the key: KAU's admin is a multisig, so it scores 10 on control instead of 0. It gives up ground on enforceability (85 vs PAXG's 100) because Kinesis Cayman is not a bankruptcy-remote trust. One quirk to know: KAU is denominated in grams and lives on the Kinesis network rather than Ethereum, so its $131.84 price is one gram of gold — roughly 1/31 of a PAXG.

XAUt (81): biggest by market cap, hardest to exit

XAUt is the largest gold-backed token by TVL (~$2.76B) and scores a strong 85 on liquidity. It loses this comparison on exit, where it scores 65 against 95 for the other two. XAUt is not freely transferable, requires on-chain KYC, and blocks US, Canadian, and Singaporean holders among others. Its custodian is an undisclosed Swiss related party rather than an independent third party, and its own disclosure document notes holders are likely unsecured creditors — which is why enforceability lands at 80. The full picture is in ourTether Gold breakdown.

So which tokenized gold should you hold?

It depends on which risk you care about most, and the scores make the tradeoff explicit. If your worry is the issuer going insolvent, PAXG's bankruptcy-remote trust is the only structure here that protects you — the price is a single-key contract. If you want that same easy exit with a multisig instead of a lone key, KAU sits closest to PAXG overall at 87. If you are optimizing purely for market depth and never intend to redeem, XAUt is the deepest pool — provided its transfer restrictions do not apply to you. Same gold, three different sets of rights, and a 9-point spread that only appears once you read past the word "backed."