Tether Gold (XAUT)

Tether Gold (XAUT, often written XAUt) is a digital token in which each unit represents ownership of one fine troy ounce of physical gold held in a vault in Switzerland. It is issued by a company in the Tether group, the issuer of Tether (USDT), and launched in January 2020. People use it to hold and move gold on a blockchain, trade it around the clock and use it as collateral, without storing bars themselves.

XAUT is a form of tokenization of a real-world asset. It is often called a gold-backed stablecoin, but its value is tied to the price of gold, which moves every day, not to a currency such as the US dollar. It is separate from USDT, although both are issued and managed by the same group.

Imagine a gold dealer that keeps bars in a Swiss vault and hands out numbered cloakroom tickets, one ticket for each ounce. Whoever holds a ticket owns that share of the gold. Tether Gold is that ticket, made digital, so it can be split into tiny pieces, sent to someone on the other side of the world in minutes, or sold at three in the morning.

The ticket is only as good as the promise behind it. Holders are trusting that the gold is really in the vault, that the dealer will hand it over or buy the ticket back, and that the company will stay honest and solvent. That is why the issuer publishes regular reports from an accounting firm saying how much gold it holds.

Tether announced Tether Gold on 23 January 2020, issuing it as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum and as a token on TRON. The issuer was TG Commodities Limited, a subsidiary of Tether. For its first few years the token stayed small. Growth picked up in 2025 as the price of gold rose and demand for tokenized commodities increased: the number of tokens in circulation grew from about 246,500 at the end of March 2025 to about 520,000 at the end of December 2025, and to about 707,700 by the end of March 2026, when the tokens were worth roughly 3.3 billion US dollars. Tether said XAUT accounted for about 60 percent of the gold-backed token market at the end of 2025.

Each token is linked to gold that meets the London Good Delivery standard, the specification for large bars traded on the London bullion market. Because each XAUT is one troy ounce, its gold content and value can be worked out directly:

• $N$ is the number of XAUT tokens held.
• $31.1035$ is the number of grams in one troy ounce.
• $V$ is the value of the holding.
• $P_{\text{oz}}$ is the market price of one troy ounce of gold.

For example, someone holding 0.25 XAUT owns $0.25 \times 31.1035 = 7.78$ grams of gold. If gold were priced at 4,000 US dollars an ounce, the holding would be worth $0.25 \times 4{,}000 = 1{,}000$ dollars. In practice the token's market price can sit slightly above or below the gold price, depending on trading conditions.

The gold is allocated, meaning specific bars are assigned to tokens, and holders can look up the bar behind their address. Verified customers can buy and redeem directly with the issuer, with a minimum purchase of 50 tokens at launch. Physical delivery is available only within Switzerland and needs enough tokens to cover a whole bar, around 430; most holders instead sell XAUT on an exchange.

Tether publishes attestation reports, prepared by the accounting firm BDO Italia, that state how many fine troy ounces of gold the issuer holds against the tokens in circulation. An attestation confirms balances at one moment; it is not a full audit of the issuer's finances. See proof of reserves for the wider debate about how far such reports can be relied on. The bars are held by a custodian in Switzerland on the issuer's behalf, which adds a layer of custody risk outside the blockchain.

• Holding gold digitally. XAUT gives exposure to gold in small amounts, without storage arrangements or minimum bar sizes.
• Trading. It is listed on major cryptocurrency exchanges and trades at any hour, unlike most gold markets.
• Collateral. Some decentralized finance platforms accept XAUT as collateral for loans.
• Transfers. Gold value can be sent across borders between wallets quickly, though the recipient still faces the gold price risk.

Tokens backed by commodities are treated differently from country to country. Under the European Union's MiCA framework, tokens that reference assets other than a single official currency fall under the rules for asset-referenced tokens. Direct buyers must pass know-your-customer checks. The main risks are reliance on a single issuer and custodian, the limited scope of attestations, Tether's past disputes with regulators over its USDT reserves, and the price swings of gold itself, which mean XAUT does not hold a steady value the way dollar stablecoins aim to.

• Tether Gold
• Tether