Stablecoin Titan Tether Wants Gold to Be Used for Everyday Payments—Here's How
Tether introduced “Scudo,” a new unit of account for gold, with each Scudo representing one-thousandth of a troy ounce of gold and its XAUT token. This initiative aims to make gold more practical for everyday payments, paralleling how “satoshi” is used for Bitcoin. The introduction comes amid global demand for gold, driven by inflation concerns, central bank purchases, and interest in safe-haven assets. XAUT’s market capitalization has reached $2.3 billion, nearly quadrupling in the past year, and is backed by gold held in secure vaults. XAUT tokens can be redeemed for physical gold in Switzerland. Tether also offers Alloy, a token backed by XAUT, allowing users to obtain aUSDT, pegged to the US dollar. Competitor Paxos’s gold-backed PAXG token has a $1.7 billion market cap and is regulated under a federal banking charter. Tether claims to hold 116 metric tons of gold, valued at roughly $17 billion. The company highlights Scudo as a simple, accessible unit, designed to restore gold’s use as a medium of exchange.
