Tether Gold Token Backed by 7.7 Tons of Physical Gold: Report

Gold-backed stablecoin Tether Gold's total market value recently soared above $800 million as investors continued embracing safe-haven assets amid concerns over rising inflation, with a newly released attestation from a third-party auditing firm showing just how much gold that Tether is stockpiling to back the token.  

The cryptocurrency hit a $770 million market capitalization as of March 31 and was backed by more than 7.7 tons of gold, according to a report from accounting firm BDO Italia. Mirroring the price rise of an ounce of gold, XAUT was trading at about $3,123 as of that date, up 9.6% from the end of the last financial quarter, Tether said in a statement.

As of this writing, the price of XAUT has climbed to $3,344, per data from CoinGecko, driving the market cap for the coin to approximately $825 million. Tether released its first attestation for the token on Monday.

"While central banks are stacking up hundreds of tons of gold, XAUT is set to become the standard tokenized gold product for the people and institutions," Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a social media post.

The growth in Tether Gold's market value comes as investors flock to risk-off assets such as gold amid economists’ warnings that U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war could put upward pressure on consumer prices. 

The price of gold has risen 7% since April 2, when the Trump administration unveiled a proposal to impose sweeping tariffs on its foreign trading partners. Gold has continued to set new all-time high price marks in recent weeks amid broader market volatility.

Meanwhile, financial institutions have increasingly sought to snap up gold over the past few years, with 29% of central banks reporting their intentions to bolster their reserves of the asset over the next twelve months, according to the World Gold Council's 2024 Central Bank Gold Reserves (CBGR) report.

This latest XAUT-focused report has stoked long-time concerns over Tether's financial reporting practices, particularly around its market-leading USDT stablecoin.

The attestation from BDO Italia does not include primary statements and disclosures from the stablecoin issuer, meaning it does not comply with international financial reporting standards—the global gold standard for financial reporting. 

The company's critics have called for the multi-billion-dollar firm to receive independent audits, and Tether was reportedly looking to contract a “Big 4” auditing firm to evaluate its reserves as of earlier this year.

Tether did not immediately respond to Decrypt's inquiry into whether the firm would continue using BDO Italia for financial products' attestations.

BDO Italia has fielded several allegations that its reporting practices violate auditing standards. Earlier this year, Italy's main securities regulator CONSOB slapped the firm with a $250 million fine, Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged BDO Italia with putting out “false and misleading” audit opinions in 2015, a press release from the agency shows.

Edited by Andrew Hayward