A digital currency company holds more gold than most national central banks, and this is just the beginning. As of September 2025, Tether's gold reserves have soared to 116 tons, worth approximately $12.9 billions.
This scale puts it ahead of the central bank gold reserves of countries such as Australia, Czech Republic, and Denmark, ranking it among the top 30 gold holders in the world.
Even more astonishing is its pace of gold acquisition—over the past year, Tether has increased its gold holdings by an average of more than 1 ton per week, ranking third in the global central banking system, behind only Kazakhstan and Brazil, and even surpassing the central banks of Turkey and China.
1. The Gold Behemoth: Scale and Speed
● In the field of gold reserves, Tether has quietly become a force to be reckoned with. According to the latest report from investment bank Jefferies, Tether currently holds at least 116 tons of gold, with 12 tons backing its XAUt token and about 104 tons backing USDT.
● This scale makes it the largest non-sovereign gold holder in the world, rivaling small central banks. Tether's pace of gold accumulation is equally jaw-dropping. In the third quarter of 2025 alone, it increased its gold holdings by about 26 tons, equivalent to 2% of global gold demand.
This rate of gold acquisition even exceeds the gold purchases of most central banks.
2. Strategic Layout: More Than Just Hoarding Gold Bars
● Tether's gold strategy is far more than simply hoarding gold bars; it is about building a complete gold ecosystem. Unlike most central banks that store gold at the Bank of England or the New York Fed, Tether has chosen to build its own vaults and self-custody.
● CEO Paolo Ardoino revealed that Tether has built "one of the safest vaults in the world" in Switzerland and is constructing a second vault in Singapore to serve the Asian market.
● Even more strategically, Tether is laying out the entire gold industry chain. In June 2025, Tether's investment entity announced its stake in Canadian-listed company Elemental Altus Royalties, a company focused on gold and precious metals royalties and streaming.
● Through these moves, Tether could acquire over one-third of Elemental Altus's shares, becoming a "cornerstone shareholder" of this gold royalty company.
● In addition, Tether is also recruiting talent from the traditional financial sector. According to reports, Tether has poached two of the world's top precious metals traders from HSBC: Global Head of Metals Trading Vincent Domien and EMEA Head of Precious Metals Financing Mathew O’Neill.
3. Deep Motives: Diversified Reserves and Risk Hedging
Behind Tether's large-scale allocation of gold reserves lies a complete asset philosophy and risk hedging strategy.
● Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has mentioned on multiple occasions that he considers gold to be "nature's bitcoin"—equally scarce, equally time-tested, with one existing in the physical world and the other in the digital world. Guided by this philosophy, Tether regards gold as one of the safety bases of its balance sheet.
● First, gold is an effective tool to hedge against extreme risks in the US dollar system. The scale of USDT has grown to be on par with the currencies of small countries and regional banking systems.
This forces Tether to consider an extreme scenario: If, in the future, US regulators or the banking system put pressure on or even freeze its assets, relying solely on US Treasuries and bank deposits would be too passive on the asset side.
Gold does not belong to any sovereign credit and can be completely separated from the traditional custody system through self-built vaults, providing Tether with an important risk barrier.
● Secondly, in the era of RWA (Real World Assets), gold is the most easily accepted off-chain asset.
By "slicing" this gold and putting it on-chain through XAU₮, Tether turns it into globally tradable, composable DeFi collateral and settlement assets, forming a clever closed loop.
4. Two Models: USDT and Gold Tokens
It is important to distinguish that Tether's gold reserves actually support two different product models.
● One is as part of the reserves for USDT. These 104 tons of gold enhance the credit and risk resistance of the US dollar stablecoin USDT itself. Users holding USDT are still pegged to 1 US dollar, with gold being just a part of Tether's underlying assets.
● The other is the gold-pegged gold token XAU₮. Each XAU₮ token corresponds to one troy ounce of physical gold, held in Swiss vaults. As of September 30, 2025, Tether's total physical gold reserves reached 375,572.297 troy ounces, meeting the London Good Delivery standard.
This means Tether has two layers of gold exposure: one is the gold reserves recorded on its own balance sheet, and the other is the reserves behind the gold token XAU₮, with this portion of gold restructured as a financial product that can circulate on-chain.
5. Market Impact: Reshaping the Gold Supply and Demand Landscape
Tether's large-scale gold purchases have already begun to affect the global gold market's supply and demand dynamics.
● The Jefferies report details that Tether's gold demand may have tightened gold market supply and affected market sentiment in the short term, which may have driven speculative capital inflows.
● During the second wave of gold price increases this year (mid-August to mid-October), gold prices surged another $1,000, coinciding with a surge in Tether's gold purchases.
● This impact is evident not only in the physical market but also in the digital world. Tether Gold (XAU₮) has evolved into a key tool for channeling digital demand into physical gold.
● By expanding the utility of XAU₮ across multiple blockchain ecosystems, Tether is democratizing gold investment, enabling investors to trade digital gold without traditional intermediaries, thereby increasing liquidity and reducing friction in the gold market.
6. Regulatory Challenges and Future Outlook
Tether's gold strategy also faces regulatory challenges and uncertainties.
● The "GENIUS Act" passed by the US Congress in July 2025 established a new regulatory framework for the stablecoin sector, but explicitly prohibits compliant issuers from using gold as a reserve asset. In response, Tether has stated that it plans to launch a stablecoin compliant with the GENIUS Act, called USAT, which will be completely separated from gold.
● But what is puzzling is why Tether has continued to increase USDT's gold reserves after the GENIUS Act was passed. Some analysts believe this may be because Tether is not a US company; it operates from El Salvador and treats USDT as an offshore product, while preparing a compliant stablecoin for the US market.
● If US regulators ultimately decide to restrict offshore stablecoins, Tether's gold portfolio may not just be an auxiliary project, but could become a lifeline.
In the future, if a regulatory storm really hits and US dollar stablecoins are blocked, Tether's gold reserves will become its confidence to shift to gold-backed stablecoins. The integration of gold and blockchain is no longer just a theoretical discussion, but a fact that is happening.
When the new order is established, the winner may not be the issuer with the loudest marketing, but those companies that have already mastered diversified and reliable gold-related cash flow sources and have experience managing billions in tokenized liabilities.
