Tether, the leading issuer of USDT, has just integrated 80 tons of gold into a single vault in Switzerland, equivalent to 8 billion USD. This is part of the company's strategy to purchase more gold as the value of this metal is increasing. However, the amount of gold accounts for less than 5% of USDT reserves and has not been audited. Tether launched a gold token two years ago and is now one of the largest gold holders in the world.
CEO Paolo Ardoinio claims Tether's gold vault is the safest, but the company has yet to conduct an asset audit. This raises questions about transparency, as Tether has issued over 159 billion USD in USDT tokens while only having 8 billion USD in gold. The remaining reserves are primarily U.S. Treasury bonds totaling 98 billion USD. The new gold vault is a significant milestone, but it does not fully address the doubts regarding USDT reserves.$BTC