Tether Gold: 25.7 tons of gold in the vault and a record $3.44 billion

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The count is accurate. The report published on tether.io lists 827,418 fine troy ounces as of September 30, 2026, or approximately 25.7 tonnes, compared to 520,089 ounces as of December 31, 2025. This is 59% more metal in nine months, and 766 additional 12.5 kilo London Good Delivery bars in Swiss coffers. The stock increases from 1,291 to 2,057 bars.

The value only increased by 53%, from 2.25 to 3.44 billion dollars. The certificate holds an ounce at $4,157, below its level at the end of 2025. Gold had hit a record around $5,500 at the end of January before falling. XAUT holders did not flinch: Tether has seen more than 9 tonnes of net purchases since January and customer assets increased by 73% over the period, to 709,324 tokens sold. There remain 118,094 tokens already minted but not yet placed, or $491 million in gold waiting for a buyer.

XAUT was trading around $4,114 on Thursday at 6 a.m. (Paris time) for 3.33 billion capitalization and 809,000 tokens in circulation, according to CoinGecko. Its rival PAX Gold (PAXG), issued by Paxos in New York, caps at 1.85 billion for 447,700 ounces. Tether therefore holds almost two thirds of the leading duo, and the group claims more than half of the global market for stablecoins backed by gold since January.

The metal itself helped. The ounce jumped more than 3% on Wednesday above $4,050 as the dollar fell after the Democratic victory in Congress, CNBC reports. Nothing to do with the $5,500 in January, but enough to give color to the golden chips.

A word on the mechanics, because the devil is in the trunk. Each XAUT is worth one fine ounce on a bar identified by its serial number, and the token is redeemable into physical metal. The issuer is TG Commodities, a Salvadoran company registered under the local digital assets law. And the quarterly certificate is signed by the management of this company, with a sample test of the bars entrusted to an independent third party. A sample control, therefore, not a complete audit of the 2,057 ingots.

The 25.7 tonnes of XAUT belong to the token holders. Not on Tether. The group holds others for its own account: USDT reserves numbered around 130 tonnes at the end of March according to the first quarter certification, and Bloomberg estimated this treasure at nearly $20 billion in May. Add 150,000 bitcoins and 132 billion US Treasuries, and you have a stablecoin issuer that increasingly resembles a mid-sized central bank. The $1.5 billion in for the third quarter comes mainly from these Treasury bills.

Machine-translated from French