Tether, the world's largest stablecoin issuer, announced a new investment on the 5th: acquiring a 12% stake in Gold.com (ticker symbol: GOLD) for $150 million. This further deepens its strategic presence in the gold market and more closely integrates traditional precious metal investment with blockchain technology.
Gold.com is a comprehensive platform offering trading in physical and tokenized gold, serving both individual investors and institutional clients. As part of this collaboration, Tether will integrate its gold-backed token XAUT (Tether Gold) into Gold.com, allowing users to more easily convert between physical and tokenized gold.
XAUT Gold Token Background
XAUT (Tether Gold) is a gold-backed token launched by Tether in 2020. Each XAUT represents one ounce of physical gold stored in Swiss vaults, and holders can redeem it for physical gold bars at any time. This design combines the value-preserving properties of gold with the liquidity of cryptocurrency, making it popular among investors who want to allocate gold in their digital asset portfolios.
This acquisition of Gold.com's equity is a continuation of Tether's recent series of strategic investments. Just recently, Tether also announced a $100 million strategic equity investment in digital asset custody firm Anchorage Digital, demonstrating its active efforts to build a complete financial ecosystem encompassing stablecoins, precious metals, and custody services.
Tokenized assets continue to develop
As blockchain technology matures and the regulatory framework gradually improves, more and more investors are beginning to accept the concept of tokenized assets. Gold, as the oldest store of value asset, is expected to address many pain points of traditional gold investment when combined with blockchain technology: high storage costs, complex delivery processes, and limited trading hours.
Secondly, this investment is also an important move for Tether to diversify its risks. Although USDT's market position is solid, competition in the stablecoin sector is becoming increasingly fierce, and regulatory pressure is also increasing. By entering the gold tokenization market, Tether is building new revenue streams and a competitive advantage.
Of course, Tether is not the only player in the gold tokenization arena. Paxos' PAXG, DigixGlobal's DGX, and other competitors are also vying for market share, as are traditional financial institutions. Whether Tether can leverage its strong brand to gain an advantage in this arena remains to be seen.
