Tether announced on Thursday that it has rolled out its gold-backed token, XAUT, on BNB Chain, widening access to the leading tokenized gold asset as gold prices recently surged to record levels. The CEO of Tether stated that they were not changing what gold is but making it usable in a modern financial system.
The integration links BNB Chain’s ecosystem with XAUT, which currently leads the tokenized gold market with a market cap of $2.5 billion—nearly half of the sector’s total $5.3 billion valuation, according to CoinGecko. PAX Gold follows closely behind with a market cap of around $2.3 billion.
Initially launched on Ethereum, each XAUT token is backed 1:1 by one troy ounce of physical gold stored in Swiss vaults as London Good Delivery bars, with independent attestations verifying the reserves. According to Tether’s latest report, the company held more than 520,000 troy ounces of gold by the end of 2025.
Binance, which created both the BNB token and BNB Chain, has enabled spot trading for XAUT against pairs such as USDT, Bitcoin, FDUSD, USDC, and TRY.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino emphasized that while gold has long been trusted as a store of value, XAUT modernizes its usability by allowing it to move instantly, settle globally, and integrate into digital financial systems. He added that launching on BNB Chain significantly broadens access, potentially reaching hundreds of millions of users.
“People understand gold. They trust it because it has held value for millennia,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “With XAU₮, we are not changing what gold is; we are making it usable in a modern financial system. You still have direct exposure to physical gold, but now it can move instantly, settle globally, and integrate seamlessly with digital markets. Listing on BNB Chain expands that access to hundreds of millions of users, bringing gold into a system where it can actually be used, not just held.”
Gold prices recently climbed above $5,500 in late January and remained above $5,000 earlier this month before pulling back to around $4,442, marking a roughly 15% decline over the past month. Despite this, users on the prediction platform Myriad remain optimistic, assigning a 64% probability that prices will rise to $4,900 rather than fall to $3,700.
Tether is also the issuer behind USDT, the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoin with a market cap of $184 billion and daily trading volumes exceeding $64 billion. The company recently revealed it has engaged a “Big Four” accounting firm to conduct its first full independent audit of USDT reserves, although it has not yet disclosed which firm will carry it out.
