Tether Gold received an unqualified opinion from KPMG. They counted the gold bars one by one, and I buy that—it carries a lot more weight than the quarterly attestations they used to provide. But don't read this as “XAUT is now 100% safe.” The audit covers the period as of December 31, 2025. Today is November 12, 2026, so more than 10 months have passed in between.
The figures in Tether's November 12 announcement: At year-end, it held 520,089.350 troy ounces of physical gold, backing 520,089.300 XAUT tokens. They were valued at $2.246 billion at the time, or about $4,318 per ounce.
Now look at the current figures. CoinGecko's recently updated data shows a total XAUT supply of about 827,000, with around 809,000 in circulation. Do the math: the 520,000 tokens covered by the audit account for only about 63% of today's total supply. In other words, roughly 300,000 tokens were newly issued this year, and not one of those gold bars was covered by this Big Four audit. They are still covered by Tether's own quarterly reserve reports. The CFO's exact words were, “The audit figures are consistent with the reserves we publish quarterly”—in effect, backing the previous quarterly reports, not today's balance.
There's another interesting contrast. The year-end valuation was over $4,300 per ounce, while XAUT is now trading around $3,906 and Binance's PAXGUSDT is at $3,909. Gold is about 10% lower than at the audit date. The number of tokens has risen by nearly 60%, yet the price has fallen. That suggests the people who came in this year weren't chasing a rally; it's more like some are using XAUT as an on-chain vault, or for collateral or cross-exchange arbitrage. That's my inference, though—I don't have holder-distribution data to back it up.
So here's the real significance of this news: Tether is laying the groundwork for “XAUT as a gold ETF alternative.” Ardoino himself has said they want to compete with ETFs for market share. ETFs disclose their holdings daily and have their custodians audited regularly. XAUT is audited once a year, with a 10-month lag, so it's still a long way from that standard. Those with large holdings should be watching to see whether the 800,000-plus tokens reconcile when the 2026 report comes out.
#XAUT #Tether
The figures in Tether's November 12 announcement: At year-end, it held 520,089.350 troy ounces of physical gold, backing 520,089.300 XAUT tokens. They were valued at $2.246 billion at the time, or about $4,318 per ounce.
Now look at the current figures. CoinGecko's recently updated data shows a total XAUT supply of about 827,000, with around 809,000 in circulation. Do the math: the 520,000 tokens covered by the audit account for only about 63% of today's total supply. In other words, roughly 300,000 tokens were newly issued this year, and not one of those gold bars was covered by this Big Four audit. They are still covered by Tether's own quarterly reserve reports. The CFO's exact words were, “The audit figures are consistent with the reserves we publish quarterly”—in effect, backing the previous quarterly reports, not today's balance.
There's another interesting contrast. The year-end valuation was over $4,300 per ounce, while XAUT is now trading around $3,906 and Binance's PAXGUSDT is at $3,909. Gold is about 10% lower than at the audit date. The number of tokens has risen by nearly 60%, yet the price has fallen. That suggests the people who came in this year weren't chasing a rally; it's more like some are using XAUT as an on-chain vault, or for collateral or cross-exchange arbitrage. That's my inference, though—I don't have holder-distribution data to back it up.
So here's the real significance of this news: Tether is laying the groundwork for “XAUT as a gold ETF alternative.” Ardoino himself has said they want to compete with ETFs for market share. ETFs disclose their holdings daily and have their custodians audited regularly. XAUT is audited once a year, with a 10-month lag, so it's still a long way from that standard. Those with large holdings should be watching to see whether the 800,000-plus tokens reconcile when the 2026 report comes out.
#XAUT #Tether