What is XAUT?
XAUT (Tether Gold) is a digital token where each token represents ownership of one troy ounce of physical gold, allocated to a specific bar held in a vault in Switzerland. It is issued by TG Commodities Limited, part of Tether. It isn't a derivative or a fund that tracks the gold price. It's a claim on real, serial-numbered bullion that trades like any other digital asset.
Gold has been a store of value for more than 5,000 years. What it has never been is easy to move. XAUT keeps the asset exactly as it is and changes how you hold it.
XAUT is an example of a tokenised real-world asset: a physical asset whose ownership is recorded as a token on a blockchain. Gold suits the model well. It's standardised, already held in professional vaults and priced the same everywhere.
Here's how it works, what it costs, where it fits next to ETFs and Bitcoin, and what's worth knowing before you buy.
How XAUT is backed
Every XAUT is matched to gold that already sits in a vault. The gold is held as London Good Delivery bars, the standard set by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) for the bars traded between banks and central banks. The bars are stored in Switzerland.
The important word is allocated. Your tokens aren't a share of a general pool. They correspond to ounces on specific, serial-numbered bars. Tether runs a public lookup tool where you enter a wallet address and see the bar or bars behind it, including serial number, weight and purity.
One practical note: the lookup works on a wallet address. XAUT you hold on Coinstash sits in our custody, so to see the exact bar behind your tokens you'd withdraw them to a wallet you control.
XAUT runs on Ethereum and TRON and can be split to six decimal places, or one millionth of an ounce. At current prices that means you can hold gold in amounts of a few dollars, not a few thousand.
What it solves
Owning physical gold has always come with admin. You need somewhere safe to keep it, insurance on top, and a dealer and transport when you want to sell. Selling also means accepting the buy-back spread and dealer hours.
XAUT removes most of that:
- No storage or insurance to arrange. The gold stays in the vault. You hold the token.
- Trades 24/7. Gold markets close. XAUT doesn't.
- Any size you like. Buy a fraction of an ounce instead of a whole bar or coin.
- Moves like any digital asset. Transfer it between wallets on chain in minutes, any day of the year.
It's the same custody principle as any bullion custodian, running on newer rails. For anyone who wants exposure to physical gold without the logistics, that's a straightforward trade.
What it costs, and how it compares to a gold ETF
The biggest structural difference is the ongoing fee. A gold ETF usually charges an annual management fee, taken out of the fund every year regardless of how the gold price moves. Tether doesn't charge a management or custody fee for holding XAUT. You're not paying a fund manager each year just to keep your exposure.
What you do pay are the costs of getting in and out: the trading fee and spread when you buy or sell, and a network fee if you move XAUT on chain. Over a long holding period, one-off costs and a recurring annual fee add up very differently.
Here's how the three main ways to hold gold compare:
- Physical bullion. You own the bar or coin itself. You pay for storage and insurance, sell through a dealer during business hours, and buy in whole coins or bars.
- Gold ETF. You own units in a fund that holds gold. You pay an annual management fee, trade during exchange hours, and usually can't swap your units for physical gold.
- XAUT. You own ounces on specific, allocated vault bars. Tether charges no ongoing fee for holding, it trades 24/7 and you can buy as little as one millionth of an ounce. Holders of 430 XAUT or more can take delivery of physical gold in Switzerland.
Gold and Bitcoin aren't competing for the same job
Gold and Bitcoin both get called stores of value, so they're compared constantly. Which one is better, which one to hold. That framing misses what makes them useful together.
Gold's value comes from thousands of years of being scarce, physical and outside any single country's control. That's a big part of why it has often held its value when markets get nervous. Bitcoin's scarcity is enforced by code rather than geology, and its price has historically moved far more sharply than gold's, in both directions.
They tend to respond differently to the same conditions: inflation, rate decisions, market stress. That's what diversification actually means. Not picking the better asset, but not needing everything you hold to move the same way at the same time.
XAUT makes that easier to act on. It sits in the same account as your Bitcoin, trades on the same hours and moves on the same rails, so holding both no longer means two platforms and two sets of paperwork. Whether you hold one, the other or both comes down to your own strategy.
Worth knowing before you buy
- It follows the gold price. XAUT is designed to track one ounce of gold, so when gold falls, XAUT falls with it. Its market price can also sit slightly above or below spot gold at times.
- You're relying on the issuer. Like any custodian, the arrangement depends on Tether holding and managing the gold as it says. The bar lookup and Tether's published attestations are how you check.
- Taking delivery is for large holders. Physical redemption starts at 430 XAUT, roughly one full bar, and delivery is to an address in Switzerland. Most holders simply sell back to the market.
- Tax works like other digital assets. In Australia, buying, selling or swapping XAUT can be a capital gains tax event, the same as other crypto.
READY TO START YOUR XAUT JOURNEY?
