XAUt News: Tether's gold reserves surpass multiple Central Banks, the trend of the Bretton Woods System re-emerges.

Tether's latest reserve report shows that as of September 2025, the company holds gold valued at over $12.9 billion, surpassing the reserves of the Central Banks of countries like Australia, Czech Republic, and Denmark, ranking among the top 30 globally. In the past year, the Central Banks of countries such as China, India, Poland, and Turkey have collectively purchased over 1,100 tons of gold, setting a new record since the collapse of the Bretton Woods System.

Tether's purchasing scale and speed surpass that of sovereign Central Banks

(Source: Token Terminal)

In the past year until September, Tether has averaged over 1 ton of gold purchases per week, ranking third in the global Central Bank system, only behind Kazakhstan and Brazil, and even surpassing Turkey and the People's Bank of China. This figure is extremely astonishing, as China is one of the largest gold producers and consumers in the world, with its Central Bank's gold purchasing speed consistently among the highest globally. A private stablecoin company being able to surpass the purchasing speed of the People's Bank of China demonstrates its capital strength and strategic determination.

This does not yet include the gold reserves corresponding to its gold-backed stablecoin (XAUt) and private gold investments made with billions of dollars in profits. The latest officially disclosed news data regarding XAUt is: XAUt is backed by approximately 370,000 ounces of physical gold, equivalent to over 11 tons of metal, all stored in Swiss vaults. Driven by a surge in gold prices, the circulating market value of XAUt has exceeded 2.1 billion dollars.

This means that Tether has two layers of gold exposure: one layer is the gold reserves (1.29 billion USD) recorded on its own balance sheet, which can also be used to enhance the credit and risk resilience of the US dollar stablecoin USDT; the other layer is the reserves behind the gold token XAUt (2.1 billion USD), which are reorganized into financial products that can circulate on-chain. The total gold exposure exceeds 15 billion USD, making Tether one of the largest non-sovereign holders of gold in the world.

Tether's Three-Layer Structure of Gold Layout

Underlying Minerals: Invest in gold royalty companies such as Elemental Altus to secure future production.

Mid-level reserves: 12.9 billion USD of physical gold stored in Switzerland and Singapore's self-built vaults.

Upper Layer Token: XAUt market cap 2.1 billion USD, each corresponds to one ounce of LBMA standard gold bar.

Tether is not buying paper gold or ETFs, but real gold bars. Unlike most central banks around the world that store gold in the Bank of England or the New York Federal Reserve, Tether has chosen to build its own vault and self-custody. CEO Paolo Ardoino revealed in an interview that Tether has constructed “one of the safest vaults in the world” in Switzerland but refused to disclose its exact location. According to Deep Tide TechFlow, Tether is also building a second vault in Singapore to serve its Asian reserve business and the expansion of its gold stablecoin XAUt.

XAUt News Highlight: Poaching Top Traders from HSBC

Recently, Tether has taken a more ambitious step by directly poaching talent to enter the core hub of the gold market. According to Bloomberg, Tether has hired two top global precious metals traders from HSBC: Vincent Domien, the global head of metals trading, and Mathew O'Neill, the head of precious metals financing for the EMEA region. Both are currently serving their notice periods and are expected to join within a few months.

Domien also serves as a director of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), an organization that is the de facto standard setter for the global gold market. O'Neill has been with HSBC since 2008 and is a key figure in the European precious metals financing sector. The joining of these two executives is significant as they not only bring professional trading capabilities but, more importantly, they bring core connections and market access qualifications from the traditional gold market.

Domien's position as a director of the LBMA enables him to directly participate in the formulation of global gold market rules, which is an invaluable strategic resource for Tether. HSBC, as one of the largest gold market makers in the world, has its precious metals team in control of the deepest liquidity and pricing power in the gold market. The recruitment of two core executives from HSBC demonstrates Tether's dissatisfaction with being a passive gold buyer and its intention to become an active participant in the gold market, even a rule-maker.

From Gold Bars to Mines: Ambitions of the Entire Industry Chain Exposed

In June 2025, Tether's investment entity Tether Investments announced its stake in the Canadian listed company Elemental Altus Royalties, which specializes in gold and precious metals royalties & streams, holding revenues from several mines that are in production or nearing production. Public information shows that through a series of agreements and stake increases, Tether could secure over one-third of Elemental Altus's shares, becoming a “cornerstone investor” in this gold royalty company, and even adding approximately 100 million USD in funding to support its merger with EMX Royalty.

Tether not only buys already mined gold bars but also intends to purchase the rights to a share of future gold extracted from the ground. This kind of arrangement is extremely rare because most financial institutions, even if they invest in gold, primarily engage in trading gold bars on the secondary market or in gold ETFs, rarely delving into the upstream sector of mining royalties. The logic behind royalty investments is that purchasing a certain percentage of future output from a mine effectively locks in long-term gold supply without having to bear the operational risks of mining.

According to the Financial Times in the UK, Tether is in contact with several gold mining and investment companies, hoping to deploy capital in various aspects of mining, refining, trading, and royalty revenues to build its own “gold version of the industrial matrix.” It is reported that Tether is also in talks with gold mining investment tool Terranova Resources. Although a deal was not reached, the signal released is very clear: Tether's intention is not just simple financial investment but to systematically connect the gold industry chain.

Financial closed loop built by XAUt and Alloy

Tether Gold (XAUt) is the gold token launched by Tether, with each token corresponding to one ounce of physical gold, held in a Swiss vault, and compliant with the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) “Good Delivery Gold Bar” standards. Driven by a surge in gold prices, the circulating market capitalization of XAUt has exceeded $2.1 billion. However, Tether is not satisfied with this; it has launched the open financial platform Alloy by Tether, allowing users to use XAUt as collateral to mint a new synthetic dollar stablecoin aUSDT.

This design is extremely clever, transforming gold from a static store of value into a dynamic financial asset. Users holding XAUt can enjoy the benefits of rising gold prices while obtaining liquidity through collateralizing to mint aUSDT, without needing to sell their gold. This “both-and” financial innovation is something traditional gold investments cannot provide.

CEO Paolo Ardoino has mentioned multiple times that he is not fond of the phrase “Bitcoin is digital gold”; instead, he prefers to express that gold is the “natural Bitcoin”: equally scarce and having undergone long-term testing, with one existing in the physical world and the other in the digital world. In September 2025, Ardoino stated, “As the world becomes increasingly dark, Tether will continue to invest a portion of its profits in safe assets such as Bitcoin, gold, and land.” In his view, Bitcoin and gold will “live longer than any fiat currency” and are the ultimate value carriers that transcend cycles.

Asset Philosophy of Stateless Central Banks

Every step of Tether's asset allocation resembles a company learning how to operate as a Central Bank. It is not just chasing profits, but constructing a new order bound by code, anchored by gold and Bitcoin. Tether's bet on gold has at least a few clear motivations:

The first layer is to turn profits into “something that will not be printed more by any Central Bank.” During the high interest rate cycle, Tether earned over ten billion dollars in annual profits through massive U.S. Treasury bonds, and profits are expected to exceed 15 billion dollars by 2025. However, Ardoino is well aware that this “spread feast” is cyclical, while sovereign debt expansion is structural. Over the past year, he has repeatedly mentioned the so-called “devaluation trade,” where investors, concerned about the long-term devaluation of sovereign debt and its denominated currency, gradually shift assets from government bonds and fiat currencies to hard assets like gold.

The second layer is to guard against extreme risks under the dollar system. USDT's scale has grown large enough to be on par with the currencies of small countries and regional banking systems, forcing Tether to consider an extreme scenario: if at some point in the future, U.S. regulators or the banking system exert pressure on it or even freeze its assets, or if the entire dollar system faces systemic risk, relying solely on U.S. Treasury bonds and bank deposits on the asset side will appear too passive. Gold neither belongs to any sovereign credit nor can it be completely detached from the traditional custodial system through the establishment of its own vault.

In the third layer, during the RWA era, gold is the most easily accepted off-chain asset. Tether clearly described XAUt in its Q1 2025 announcement as “one of the largest and most compliant tokenized gold products by market capitalization,” and emphasized that all tokens are 100% backed by physical gold bars held in Swiss vaults.

By piecing these together, you will find that Tether's layout in gold presents a “top-down + bottom-up” dual attack: from the top down, it starts from the financial product side with an XAUt, using tokenization to meet global users' demand for gold, establishing a “gold flow entry”; from the bottom up, it gradually brings the assets and supply side of the gold industry chain under control through investment and equity, following the paths of gold bar reserves, mining concessions, and potential mining investments.

If the future truly moves towards a multipolar currency system, then “US debt + Bitcoin + Gold” will not just be an asset portfolio, but also the balance sheet of this “stateless Central Bank” across cycles.