Tether Introduces New Minimum Unit of Account for Gold Payments

Tether announced the introduction of Scudo, a new unit of account for XAUT. The innovation is intended to simplify the use of gold as a means of payment amid record-high prices for the precious metal and growing interest from market participants.

Each XAUT token represents one troy ounce of gold stored in Swiss vaults. The asset is backed by physical gold on a 1:1 basis, and its market cap exceeds $2.3 billion, having grown by more than 60% over the past three months. This growth was fueled by demand from private investors interested in portfolio diversification and long-term capital preservation without the costs associated with storing physical metal.

However, the practical use of XAUT faced challenges, as settlements in fractions of a troy ounce require working with long decimal values, which is inconvenient in the real economy. Scudo addresses this issue. One Scudo unit equals one thousandth of a troy ounce of gold, or 0.001 XAUT. This approach is comparable to the use of satoshis (sats) on the Bitcoin network.

Thanks to Scudo, goods and services can be priced in whole or fractional units without complex calculations. This makes gold not only a store of value but also a more practical payment instrument. The new unit of account doesn’t affect the structure or backing of XAUT and simply simplifies interaction with the asset.

According to Tether CEO

, gold retains its status as one of the key assets for value preservation alongside Bitcoin. He noted that more than 500 million people use the Tether ecosystem, primarily in developing countries, and that the launch of Scudo lowers the entry barrier and makes ownership of even small fractions of gold accessible to a broad audience.

The launch of Scudo reflects Tether’s strategy of adapting traditional assets to the digital economy and expanding access to them through blockchain infrastructure. For example, in November 2024, the company introduced the Wallet Development Kit (WDK), which allows developers to create non-custodial wallets for working with XAUT, BTC, and stablecoins on any device and operating system.