Tether Broadens XAUT Use as Ledn Moves to Offer Gold-Backed Loans
Summary
- Tether Gold (XAUT) has been added as a supported asset on Ledn (Ledn), with a collateralized lending service set to launch later this year.
- Tether said it is issuing and expanding Tether Gold backed by about $23 billion in holdings and roughly 140 tons of physical gold.
- Tether said it is broadening its investments, using USDT profits, into XAUT lending and physical redemption, Bitcoin mining, renewable energy and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
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Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, is expanding the use of its gold-backed token Tether Gold, or XAUT, as it pushes into the market for digital gold-backed lending.
Crypto lending platform Ledn will add Tether Gold as a supported asset, CoinDesk reported on June 28. Ledn currently supports Bitcoin, or BTC, USDT and XAUT, and plans to launch loans backed by Tether Gold later this year.
Tether Gold is backed one-for-one by one troy ounce of physical gold stored in a Swiss vault. Tether holds about $23 billion of gold and issues Tether Gold against those reserves.
Tether and Ledn said tokenized physical gold can serve as digital collateral much like Bitcoin, allowing holders to access liquidity without selling their assets.
Ledn said it will custody Tether Gold on a one-to-one basis, the same way it handles Bitcoin-backed loans. It added that customer assets will not be lent out or used to generate yield.
Chief Executive Officer Paolo Ardoino said demand is increasing for products that combine long-term holding with financial flexibility as digital assets take on a larger role in the global economy.
Tether has been stepping up diversification efforts using profits from its USDT business. The company holds about 140 tons of physical gold and is working to expand XAUT's use in lending and physical redemption through an investment in gold trading platform Gold.com and a partnership with crypto finance firm Antalpha.
Tether is also widening its investments into Bitcoin mining, renewable energy and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
