Block-1627
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino revealed in an interview with Bloomberg on July 7 that the company holds approximately $8 billion in gold in a Swiss vault.
Ardoino referred to the vault as 'the world's safest vault' and stated that the company almost entirely owns all of the 80 tons of gold reserves, making the El Salvador-based issuer one of the largest private gold holders in the world.
According to a document from March, gold currently accounts for nearly 5% of Tether's $112 billion reserve portfolio. The dollar value of this batch of gold reserves is comparable to the book value of precious metals held by UBS Group AG, one of the few precious metals trading banks that disclose such holdings.
Last month, Tether's USDT market capitalization reached $159 billion, with a monthly growth of nearly $5 billion.
Ardoino believes that by self-custodying gold bars rather than using commercial vault operators that charge about 50 basis points in fees, Tether can scale its gold project without proportionally increasing costs.
Legislators in Europe and the U.S. are moving in the opposite direction. Bills like the U.S. (GENIUS Act) draft and Europe's (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) (MiCA) framework specify that only cash or cash-like instruments can be used as collateral for stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies, excluding commodities like gold.
If these rules come into effect and Tether seeks licenses in these jurisdictions, it will have to liquidate the gold backing USDT, though the company can retain the metal linked to its gold-backed token XAUT.
Notably, MiCA granted licenses to 53 cryptocurrency companies in the first six months of regulatory implementation, but Tether was not among them.
XAUT is backed by 7.7 tons of gold, valued at approximately $819 million, which, while far less than the 950 tons of the leading exchange-traded gold funds, is sufficient for redemption on-site at the Swiss vault.
Ardoino stated that if investors lose confidence in U.S. fiscal sustainability and seek to avoid bank deposit risks while still retaining on-chain alternatives, demand may accelerate.
In 2025, driven by tariffs resulting from trade frictions and broader geopolitical tensions, traders rushed to hedge risks, causing spot gold prices to rise by about 25%.
Ardoino said, 'In our view, every central bank in the BRICS nations is buying gold, and that is why gold prices are rising.'
Tether still needs to convince regulators that a high proportion of metals in its reserves will not affect USDT's liquidity under pressure.
Currently, the company holds gold, earns income from U.S. Treasury bonds, and retains an independent token that can be directly redeemed for vault gold bars, combining traditional gold economics with blockchain settlement.
The original article is from cryptoslate, compiled and organized by Blockchain Knight, with English copyright belonging to the original author. For Chinese reprints, please contact the editor.
