Tether Gold Backed Stablecoin announced! Tether Gold Backed Stablecoin in the form of Tether Gold (XAU₮) is officiallly launched and available on Bitfinex. This was announced via a press release. One token represents one troy fine ounce of physical gold, currently worth around $1,550.
The new product is available as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain as well as a TRC20 token on the Tron blockchain.
The funds are said to be backed by physical gold held in a “Switzerland Vault”, so the press release reads. According to Tether, the gold offering is the only product among its competition that does not charge custody fees.
Tether has invited all exchanges wishing to support the new token to contact the company. Blockchain info on the Ethereum contract shows that there is currently an outstanding supply of almost 4,000 tokens. This would be worth $6.2 million in market capitalization.
Bitfinex has already launched XAUT trading, with one quarter of the ERC-20 supply having been moved to Bitfinex. Plans for commodity-backed Tether tokens were in the works since at least September of last year.
Tether has often been criticized for its management and transparency of its reserves.
This is what our own Kurt Wuckert Jr. has to say about the matter.
Kurt on Tether Gold Backed Stablecoin
This is a fascinating move because, on the one hand, Tether is rhetorically the least trusted entity in the entire crypto economy. However, they are the single most used blockchain asset, so a move like the creation of XAUT might melt some faces off for two reasons:
1: Who would trust Gold Tether?
2: This crazy idea just might work.
In reality, a true gold-backed stablecoin is a much-needed idea in bitcoin trading as it would introduce more liquidity and more valuable pairs for exiting trades. While we are usually keen to lobby a lofty prediction, this one has us scratching our heads and taking a step back to watch what happens next
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