Five Institutions Just Changed How You Can Own Gold and Silver

Published: 09-25-2026, 10:51 am

Gold traded near $4,279 an ounce Friday, and silver held near $63.92. Both are digesting this week’s Fed-driven pullback. But the bigger story isn’t today’s tape. Five separate moves in the past 24 hours matter more. A Wall Street bank recut its price targets. A state-owned Asian bank opened a gold-custody desk. Meanwhile, a U.S. tokenization firm turned gold leasing into a retail product. Hong Kong signaled it may become a sovereign buyer. And a U.S. mint’s CEO flagged a silver refining backlog. Five institutions. One shared signal: gold and silver access is being rebuilt in real time.

Is Wall Street’s Own Gold Forecast Splitting in Two?

Not splitting, but narrowing under pressure. Goldman Sachs analyst Lina Thomas trimmed the bank’s end-2026 gold estimate to $4,650 an ounce. That’s down from $4,900. The note followed the Federal Reserve’s September 16 rate hike [Goldman Sachs]. Goldman’s economists now expect another hike in October. In fact, much of that tightening has already shown up as softer ETF demand. Still, Thomas held the bank’s end-2027 target steady at $5,400. Her reasoning is simple. Official-sector buying is running near 90 tonnes a month. That’s against a pre-2022 average of roughly 17 tonnes. As a result, that gap alone drives nearly all of Goldman’s projected 23% gain through 2027. Thomas also expects three Fed rate cuts, spread between September 2027 and March 2028. So, Goldman has moved its timetable. It has not moved its destination.

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Why Is a State-Owned Taiwanese Bank Opening a Gold Custody Desk?

Bank of Taiwan is the island’s largest bank, and the government owns it. On Friday, it launched a wealth unit for wealthy clients, built around physical gold custody [Hubbis]. This echoes a wider pattern in Asian private banking this year. For example, Singapore’s OCBC opened a similar custody arm in June, for its wealthiest clients. OCBC cited gold-bar demand that jumped 50% in a single year. Taiwan, meanwhile, has a deep cultural tie to physical bullion. Bank of Taiwan became the country’s top gold seller back in 2007, after absorbing the old state import agency. A formal custody product, therefore, changes what that demand means to the bank. It’s no longer just a retail counter; it’s a business line. Central banks answer a similar question every time they pick a vault. Who holds the metal matters almost as much as who owns it.

Can You Now Earn Yield on Gold Without Giving It Up?

Paxos Labs thinks so. The regulated U.S. firm behind PAX Gold launched a new token on September 24 [Paxos Labs]. It’s called PAXGy, and it taps the institutional gold-leasing market directly. For decades, bullion banks, refiners, miners, and jewelers have paid to borrow physical gold. Now, PAXGy lets ordinary holders access that same lease income. A holder deposits PAX Gold or an eligible stablecoin, and the reserves go to vetted institutional borrowers. Returns show up as a rising exchange rate between the two tokens, not as new tokens landing in a wallet. So, a holder can eventually redeem more gold than they put in. The product went live on OKX and Uniswap, among others, using Chainlink’s cross-chain rails. It’s the latest attempt to formalize tokenized gold as its own asset class.

Is Hong Kong About to Become a New Sovereign Gold Buyer?

Possibly, and soon. Hong Kong’s Deputy Financial Secretary, Michael Wong, spoke at a bankers’ conference on Friday. He said he’s confident the Hong Kong Monetary Authority will make sound calls on the Exchange Fund’s gold holdings [The Standard]. His comment follows the government’s 2026 Policy Address. That address proposed exploring a bigger gold reserve, in order to help build Hong Kong into a commodities-trading hub with gold as the entry point. Wong was careful on one point, however. The HKMA will not disclose how much gold it currently holds, citing its financial-stability mandate. Central banks, for their part, bought gold at a near-record pace through 2026. A formal Hong Kong entrant would add one more name, and one more balance sheet, to that list.

Why Is Silver Backed Up for Months Even Though Supply Looks Fine?

Because the bottleneck moved. It used to sit at the mine. Now it sits at the refinery. Scottsdale Mint CEO Josh Phair told Mining.com that U.S. silver refining is running three to four months behind [Mining.com]. Geopolitical shifts, in short, are redirecting mined material toward refineries seen as more U.S.-friendly. Phair was careful to separate two things, though. Finished, investment-grade silver isn’t scarce; buyers can still find plenty in the U.S. today. The real pressure, instead, sits upstream, in processing capacity that hasn’t kept pace with demand. Years of underinvestment and slow permitting could, eventually, push that pressure even further back, toward mine supply itself. For now, anyone watching vault storage and delivery logistics should expect longer lead times on newly minted product.

SOURCES
1. BigGo Finance — Goldman Holds $5,400 Gold Target, Trims Near-Term View After Fed Hike
2. Hubbis — Bank of Taiwan Launches High-Net-Worth Wealth Business With Physical Gold Custody Service
3. PR Newswire — Paxos Labs Launches PAXGy, a PAXG-Backed Token that Grows in Gold Terms
4. The Standard — HKMA Will Make Wise Investment Decisions on Exchange Fund’s Gold Holding: Michael Wong
5. MINING.COM — Silver’s Bottleneck Is at the Refinery, Not the Vault, Scottsdale Mint CEO Says

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.     

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