Marco Shapiro

Crypto investor & researcher since 2017
Tokenized RWAs | DeFi infrastructure
Building tokenized gold for emerging markets
🇮🇱 Tel Aviv | Building in public

[Marco Shapiro @MarcoShapiro0]

1/ Gold hit $5,602 in January. Spot volume of tokenized gold in Q1 2026 alone was $90.7B — more than all of 2025 combined.

Looks like a success story.

It’s not. It’s the biggest missed opportunity in RWA right now. 🧵
_

[Marco Shapiro @MarcoShapiro0]

Unpopular take: PAXG and XAUT are not competitors to each other.
They’re competitors to a gold ETF.
The actual competitor — gold as a daily financial primitive in emerging markets — doesn’t exist yet.
That’s the real opportunity.

[Marco Shapiro @MarcoShapiro0]

Tokenized gold did $90.7B in spot volume in Q1 2026.
That’s more than the entire year of 2025 ($84.6B).
The story isn’t “gold is up.” It’s “the wrapper is finding product-market fit faster than anyone expected.”

[Marco Shapiro @MarcoShapiro0]

10/ A bit about me:

I’m Marco. 23. Repat from Russia, now in Israel.
Bought my first BTC in 2017 (8th grade, $2K).
Currently 65% in drawdown — taught me more than any green portfolio would have.

I’m spending the next year going deep on RWA, gold, and emerging markets.

Following along is welcome.
_

[Marco Shapiro @MarcoShapiro0]

1/ Gold hit $5,602 in January. Spot volume of tokenized gold in Q1 2026 alone was $90.7B — more than all of 2025 combined.

Looks like a success story.

It’s not. It’s the biggest missed opportunity in RWA right now. 🧵
_

[Marco Shapiro @MarcoShapiro0]

9/ What I think happens next:

Tokenized gold doesn’t grow by taking PAXG/XAUT users.
It grows by reaching the people for whom gold is already a daily financial primitive.

Yield-bearing gold. Gold-backed lending. Spending rails. Local on/off ramps. Regulated under frameworks that emerging markets actually trust.

The next $50B comes from there.
_

[Marco Shapiro @MarcoShapiro0]

@DeFiTracer AXCVmBtFodXmHCXGPukbxJZh83Nwr2G5iCKhEdhzYLrA
Sol 🙈