Tether Gold Reserves Rise 59% to 25.7 Tonnes in Q3

25.7 Tonnes of Vaulted Gold

Tether released its third-quarter reserve report on Wednesday, disclosing that the physical gold behind Tether Gold (XAUT) reached roughly 25.7 tonnes as of September 30, a 59% increase over the position recorded at the end of 2025. The report values those holdings at approximately $3.44 billion, a figure computed from 827,417.630 troy ounces at a gold price of $4,157.41 per ounce. Each XAUT token is designed to represent ownership of one troy ounce of pure gold, a one-to-one construction that makes the instrument one of the most literal implementations of real-world assets carried on a public blockchain. Tether publishes these updates quarterly, pairing balance-sheet totals with an external assurance opinion, and the Wednesday disclosure follows that established pattern. Customer exposure expanded faster than the vault itself. Tether stated that gold held by Tether Gold customers climbed 73% from the start of the year, a measure that counts only tokens already sold to users rather than the entire backing pool. The two growth rates therefore cover different quantities: the 59% reserve increase includes metal that supports minted but unsold tokens, while the 73% customer figure tracks issued and held supply alone. The end-2025 baseline stood at 520,009 troy ounces, which means Tether added 307,328.630 troy ounces of bullion over the first nine months of 2026. The pace accelerated in the second half. Reserves moved from 707,747.139 troy ounces, about 22.01 tonnes, at the end of June to the September 30 reading, an increase of roughly 3.7 tonnes in a single quarter. Demand followed the same path: tokens sold to customers rose from 612,823.660 at the end of June to 709,323.660, an addition of about 96,500 tokens in three months.

The issuance mechanics sit in the same document. As of September 30, 827,417.630 XAUT had been issued, 709,323.660 of those had been sold to customers, and 118,093.970 remained available for future sale. The unsold balance works as a buffer, letting the issuer fill purchase orders without waiting for new bars to clear the deposit process. Reserves back both sold tokens and pre-sale supply: the report explains that tokens are issued only after the corresponding gold bars complete the custodian's deposit procedures. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said “every token is linked to physical gold bullion that anyone can verify,” putting the verifiable link between issued tokens and stored bars at the center of the product's pitch. The bullion is stored in Switzerland. The report's inventory counts 2,057 bars in the 12.5-kilogram class, 15 one-kilogram bars and 18 half-kilogram bars, with the 12.5-kilogram count up by 766 from 1,291 at the end of 2025. Every bar meets the London Bullion Market Association's good delivery standard, the quality benchmark governing traditional finance bullion settlement. DeFi usage is emerging alongside custody: XAUT supply on Aave Ethereum V3 was recorded at 15,400 tokens as of September 1. The report covers Tether Gold only. It is compiled separately from the reserves behind the dollar stablecoin USDT, a distinction that keeps the two liability pools on distinct ledgers; COINOTAG's tracking of Binance USDT reserves showed a 7.95% decline to 29.48 billion tokens in October. Independent assurance came from BDO, which concluded the reserve report was fairly presented in all material respects, confirming the bullion's existence and valuation, reconciling accounting records against on-chain liabilities, and sampling bullion quality documentation. Its scope was confined to the September 30 report and covered no other date or period.

Mints Running Ahead of Sales

The quarter reads cleanly once the two measures are kept apart. A 59% reserve expansion against a 73% rise in customer-held tokens means mints are running ahead of net sales, which is what the 118,093.970 unsold tokens at quarter-end imply. The report also sharpens the boundary of Tether's liability stack: the dollar reserves behind USDT and the bullion behind XAUT are attested on separate ledgers, so growth in tokenized gold does not draw on the dollar pool. The dollar coin carries its own scorecard, from an IMF benchmark that puts stablecoin remittance costs at 2.18% on a $200 transfer to Tether's crypto service revenue topping $118 million in a single week. BDO's date-limited scope remains the caveat: the 25.7-tonne figure is a September 30 snapshot, and the next reading will show whether the quarterly addition of 3.7 tonnes holds.