The digital gold market, valued at an estimated $45-billion to $55-billion today, could unlock up to $700-billion in latent demand, according to new research from the World Gold Council (WGC) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

A report published by the WGC and BCG points to substantial untapped appetite among retail investors, with nearly nine in ten surveyed saying they would consider digital gold under the right conditions.

The $700-billion opportunity represents the estimate of total latent demand that could be released if today’s barriers to adoption were removed, rather than a near-term forecast.

The report’s five-year base case sees digital gold growing by about 27% a year to between $160-billion and $170-billion by 2031. That could rise to between $270-billion and $280-billion over the same time if more barriers fall faster.

The WGC says momentum is already building as financial markets undergo a broader digital transformation, bringing tokenised investment products increasingly into the mainstream.

Tokenised gold, one segment of the digital gold market alongside vaulted digital gold, has grown fivefold in value since late 2024 to about $6-billion. Cumulative spot trading volumes in tokenised gold exceeded $90-billion in the first quarter of this year, more than in the whole of 2025.

The WGC explains that what holds investors back is not a lack of interest but four key barriers: trust, access, utility and cost.

Hence, it notes that investors point to stronger consumer protections, transparent proof of backing, accessible redemption and clearer regulation as the conditions most likely to increase confidence in digital gold.

Access is another important barrier to address. Where digital gold is sold through familiar channels such as super-apps, payment platforms and banking apps, as is done in China, India and Indonesia, the WGC says the share of investors who hold it is currently up to seven times higher than in less mature markets.

The WGC argues that solving for those barriers could expand the gold market, rather than just redistribute demand.

According to the report, about 65% of the latent demand sits with people who do not yet own gold. Among today’s digital gold investors, 52% held no gold before their first digital purchase, of which 92% have since bought other forms of gold, highlighting that digital gold can act as an entry point to the wider gold market.

Even allowing for some movement between existing gold products, the base case points to about $95-billion of genuinely new demand for gold by 2031.

The WGC says younger investors are leading the way: awareness of digital gold reaches 50% among 25- to 34-year-olds, compared with 23% among those aged 55 and over.

WGC CEO David Tait says significant investor interest in digital gold is clear, but demand cannot scale without the right infrastructure behind it.

He points out that this is the role that the platform Gold as a Service is designed to play.

Gold as a Service is an initiative by the WGC that aims to build new market infrastructure designed to unlock the next era of digital gold’s development.

As shared infrastructure in development, Tait explains that it aims to help issuers bring competitive, compliant digital gold products to market more efficiently, supported by the sourcing, custody and compliance capabilities they would otherwise need to build themselves.

“But infrastructure alone is not enough. Building a liquid, trusted market will require the wider industry to work to the same standards, so investors can have confidence in what they are buying,” says Tait.

Earlier this year, the WGC co-authored a White Paper titled ‘Digital Gold: The Case for a Shared Infrastructure’ with BCG, which explores Gold as a Service – a new platform to support the issuance and operation of scalable, interoperable digital gold products.

Gold as a Service would act as an open platform, connecting the physical custody of gold with the digital systems used to issue and manage gold-backed products.

By standardising essential market processes such as custody coordination, reconciliation, compliance and redemption, the model aims to reduce operational complexity, improve access and enable greater consistency across digital gold products.

Recognising the physical nature of gold, it is designed to modernise how gold integrates with an increasingly digital financial ecosystem, while preserving the asset’s foundational attributes that have underpinned its role and relevance for millennia.

WGC senior market analyst Louise Street tells Mining Weekly that the Gold as a Service platform is designed to provide a trusted infrastructure layer to enable digital gold providers to plug in to that layer that underpins the digital gold provision of tokenised products.

She explains that the platform is part of the WGC’s work to help build broader trust in the sector for digital gold.

She added that regulators also have a role to play, noting that there is already momentum in certain markets to regulate digital gold.

Street explains that the prospects for digital gold in the South African market are also positive, given the country’s familiarity with crypto and understanding of gold as an investment asset.

“We undertook this project with the belief that gold has the potential to become the world’s most credible digital asset – not despite its physical nature, but because of it.

“Our research has reinforced our confidence in the scale of this opportunity and provided a clearer understanding of what it will take to realise its full potential,” says BCG MD and partner Urs Rahne.