Tether Buys Gold Like a Drunk Tsar – And Outshines Central Banks

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And lo! From the digital steppes of cyberspace rides Tether – not on a horse, not in a carriage, but on a wave of algorithmic triumph – to purchase gold with the zeal of a Cossack who’s just discovered he has a bank account and a nebulous sense of purpose.

Yes, dear reader, this crypto entity – born, one suspects, in a dimly lit server room from a dream and a tax loophole – has begun stuffing its vaults with physical gold like a provincial governor preparing for the apocalypse (or a particularly aggressive audit).

When Stablecoins Grow Up, They Want Gold: A Tragicomedy in Real Time

In the final thunderous quarter of 2025, Tether is said to have collected no less than 27 metric tons of the noble yellow metal. That’s not quite enough to pave the road to Kyiv, but certainly enough to make central bankers in Basel clutch their ledgers and mutter, “Well, that’s new.”

Tether Gold Accounts for More Than Half the Entire Gold-Backed Stablecoin Market as XAU₮ Surpasses $4 Billion in Value

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– Tether (@tether) January 26, 2026

Analysts – those solemn soothsayers in cardigans – estimate that in Q3, Tether had already snatched up around 26 tons. In total, they’ve allegedly hoarded 116 tons in a single year, surpassing, one must emphasize, the joint efforts of several central banks who, one assumes, were too busy issuing press statements about inflation to get their hands on actual bullion.

“Who’s the central bank now?” asked Matt Hougan, ever the bard of Bitwise, on the digital town square known as X (formerly Twitter, formerly a birdcage). “Tether bought more gold than any central bank in Q3. And in Q4, we’re likely to see them ranked among the top three – if not crowned emperor.”

“Who’s the central bank now? Tether bought more gold than any central bank in Q3 2025, according to official data. It’s going to be close in Q4 – we’re still waiting on final data – but the company will be top 3,” Hougan wrote on X.

The gold, meanwhile, has been behaving as if possessed – leaping past $3,000, then $4,000, and finally, like a peasant-turned-tsar, crowning itself king at $5,000 per ounce. All of this while ordinary folks can barely afford a single shiny penny.

Tether’s current hoard, worth a cool $4.4 billion, now looms over the gold market like an uninvited noble at a royal wedding – influential, slightly suspicious, but undeniably rich.

And here’s the kicker: unlike central banks, which buy gold to appear solemn and responsible (and maybe intimidate their neighbors), Tether isn’t motivated by tradition, duty, or economic policy. No, no. It funds its purchases with profits from – brace yourself – lending digital dollars to the United States government.

Yes! By parking $187 billion of USDT reserves in U.S. Treasury bills – those magical IOUs that grow yield like mushrooms in spring – Tether has essentially become a financial vampire: it drinks the interest and then spends it on gold.

From Bit to Bullion: The Metamorphosis of a Stablecoin

Thus, Tether has transformed itself – not unlike Gregor Samsa, but with more dignity and less abdomen – into a creature both strange and formidable:

  • Part digital mint
  • Part Swiss vault renter
  • And part gold-hoarding dragon from a children’s morality tale.

By the end of September, it already owned $12.9 billion worth of gold – about 104 tons – though this made up a mere 7% of USDT’s backing. The rest? U.S. Treasuries – because nothing says “decentralization” quite like funding the American empire.

But the true marvel is XAUT – Tether’s tokenized gold bauble, which now commands 60% of the world’s gold-backed stablecoin market. That market, incidentally, ballooned from $1.3 billion to $4 billion in 2025 – because when people stop trusting money, they apparently start trusting digital receipts for gold stored in Switzerland.

As of year-end, Tether’s holdings amounted to 520,089 fine troy ounces – all locked in vaults so secure, not even a greedy Swiss mouse could nibble a corner. Each token, they swear, is backed 1:1. Just like the alchemist’s promise of turning lead into gold – only this time, it might actually be true.

“We are operating at a scale that now places the Tether Gold Investment Fund alongside sovereign gold holders, and that carries real responsibility,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said, presumably while gazing thoughtfully into a mirror and whispering, “The empire needs me.”

He added, with all the gravitas of a prophet on a mountaintop, that XAUT aims to “remove ambiguity at a time when confidence in monetary systems is weakening.”

Tether Gold attestation for Q4/2025 is out!
Great timing as $XAUT Gold > $5000.

– Paolo Ardoino 🤖 (@paoloardoino) January 26, 2026

Meanwhile, poor Poland – bless its patriotic heart – added only 35 tons in Q4, bringing its total to 550 tons. Impressive? Certainly. But Tether, a company that didn’t exist a decade ago and may not even have a soul, is now in the same league, casually out-buying nations with folklore, anthems, and real borders.

And so the world staggers forward into a future that makes less sense than ever: where private firms in the digital realm accumulate national-scale reserves not by conquering territories, but by algorithmic yield farming and smart contracts written in code so obscure, not even their lawyers understand it.

The question trembling in the air, like a nervous balalaika string, is not how much more gold Tether will buy – but what happens when the new guardians of monetary credibility are not governments, but corporations that answer only to profit, algorithms, and the occasional tweet.

One thing is certain: should revolution come, and the people storm the central banks, they may find – to their great confusion – that the real gold was never in the vaults of nations… but in the blockchain all along.

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2026-01-27 08:46