Tether Opens Its $23 Billion Gold Reserve to Loans Backed by Tokenized Bullion

Tether will let XAUT holders borrow against tokenized gold through crypto lender Ledn, putting its $23 billion bullion reserve to work as one-to-one loan collateral by late 2026.

Tether Opens Its $23 Billion Gold Reserve to Loans Backed by Tokenized Bullion Tether will let XAUT holders borrow against tokenized gold through crypto lender Ledn, putting its $23 billion bullion reserve to work as one-to-one loan collateral by late 2026. Aaron Rafferty June 28, 2026 Key Takeaways Tether will let holders of its Tether Gold token, XAUT, borrow against their bullion through crypto lender Ledn, with the product expected to go live before the end of 2026. The stablecoin issuer holds roughly 140 metric tons of physical gold worth about $23 billion, one of the largest corporate gold positions in the world. Collateral is held one to one and not lent out or used for yield, mirroring how Ledn structures its bitcoin-backed loans. Tether is putting its gold to work. The stablecoin issuer said it will let holders of Tether Gold, its token known as XAUT, borrow against the bullion without selling it, through a new lending product built with crypto lender Ledn. CoinDesk reported the plan on June 27, and the loans are expected to go live before the end of 2026. Each XAUT token represents one troy ounce of gold held in vaults in Switzerland. Tether has built one of the largest corporate gold positions in the world, roughly 140 metric tons worth about $23 billion, and XAUT's market value has passed $3 billion . The new product lets that tokenized gold serve as loan collateral the way bitcoin already does on Ledn. The structure matters. Ledn says client collateral is held one to one and is not lent out or used to generate yield, the same approach it uses for bitcoin-backed loans. That design is meant to avoid the rehypothecation that sank several crypto lenders in 2022, when customer assets were quietly reused and then vanished. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino