Tether Gold Payment Revolution: Launching the "Scudo" Minimum Unit, Has the Crypto "Golden Age" Arrived?

The world’s largest stablecoin issuer, Tether, officially launches a new valuation unit for its gold token, Tether Gold, called Scudo. One Scudo represents one-thousandth of a troy ounce of gold. This move aims to solve the “decimal point problem” of using gold as a payment method on-chain, marking Tether’s push of gold as a store of value into a new battlefield of payment media. This innovation comes at a time when the spot gold price is expected to surpass $4,550 per ounce by the end of 2025, and the overall market cap of gold tokens is approaching a peak of $4.4 billion, reflecting strong market demand for digital safe-haven assets amid inflation and macroeconomic uncertainties.

Scudo Debuts: Solving the “Decimal Point Dilemma” in Gold Payments

Against the backdrop of gold prices soaring to record highs in 2025, an age-old and practical problem re-emerges: how to make gold, the ultimate store of value, as easy to divide and use as cash in the digital age? Tether’s answer is a new unit called Scudo. Essentially, Scudo is not a new asset but a measurement innovation for its existing product, Tether Gold. Each XAUT token is always pegged to one physical ounce of gold, while one Scudo is defined as one-thousandth of an XAUT, i.e., one-thousandth of an ounce of gold.

The cleverness of this design lies in its direct targeting of the inherent flaw of high-value assets in micro-payment scenarios. When gold prices reach over $4,500 per ounce, even small transactions like buying a coffee would require paying a tiny fractional amount of gold (e.g., 0.000666 ounces). Such numbers are neither intuitive nor easy to handle in transfers and accounting. The emergence of Scudo, similar to “satoshis” in Bitcoin, converts transaction units from a difficult-to-handle tiny fraction into a more complete, readable integer (e.g., 0.666 ounces can be represented as 666 Scudo), greatly enhancing user experience and payment feasibility.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino commented that Scudo makes gold easier to hold, price, and trade, lowering user barriers. He pointed out that user experience has always been one of the biggest challenges in the digital asset industry, and Scudo was born to address this challenge. This is not just a technical tweak but a profound product mindset shift—it means that Tether Gold’s goal is no longer just for investors to “hold” gold on-chain but to “use” gold for everyday value exchanges easily.

Comparison of Key Mechanisms: Tether Gold vs. Scudo

Beyond Stablecoins: Tether’s Ambition to Build a Gold Payment Ecosystem

The launch of Scudo is not an isolated product update but a key part of Tether’s infrastructure strategy, revealing a deeper ambition: to build a next-generation payment stack based on gold. For a long time, Tether’s core business has been providing fiat-pegged stablecoins, serving as a liquidity backbone in the crypto market. However, gold, as a non-sovereign, inflation-resistant global asset, has the potential to reshape value exchange models, especially when fiat currencies face uncertainties.

To realize this vision, Tether has also released broader developer tools alongside Scudo. The company provides a technical layer that allows enterprises, developers, and AI agents to deploy self-custody wallets supporting XAUT, other stablecoins, and Bitcoin, with cross-device and cross-OS compatibility. This means third-party applications can easily integrate Tether Gold’s payment functions into their services—for cross-border settlements, micro-payments, or as collateral in DeFi protocols. Scudo removes the final operational barriers for such high-frequency, small-value applications.

The macro context for these moves includes ongoing central bank gold purchases, inflation concerns, and interest rate policy swings, all driving unprecedented demand for gold. Tether keenly recognizes that channeling this demand from traditional gold bars, ETFs, and futures markets into a more efficient, inclusive blockchain track is a significant historical opportunity. By making gold programmable, instantly divisible, and globally transferable, Tether aims to rekindle gold’s role as a medium of exchange—an evolution since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, where gold’s mainstream economic role has gradually diminished.

Therefore, the debut of Scudo marks Tether’s strategic shift from merely issuing “digital dollars” to building a “multi-layered value exchange infrastructure.” In this blueprint, fiat-backed stablecoins and commodity-based digital gold will coexist, serving a more diverse and resilient crypto economy.

Market & Competition: The Rise of Gold Tokens, Why XAUT Leads?

Tether’s expansion into gold tokenization is not without reason but based on a rapidly growing and increasingly competitive market. Industry data shows that by the end of 2025, the total market cap of all gold tokens has risen to about $4.3 billion, approaching its historical peak. This growth coincides with spot gold prices surpassing other assets like US stocks and Bitcoin in 2025, highlighting a swift shift of risk-averse investors toward on-chain safe-haven assets amid market turbulence.

In this digital gold race, Tether Gold, with its first-mover advantage and robust ecosystem, has established a clear leadership position. Its market cap accounts for roughly half of the entire gold token sector. Each XAUT token is backed 1:1 by physical gold bars stored in Swiss vaults, with ownership records publicly accessible on-chain—transparency and reliability that underpin market trust. Additionally, Tether’s large user network and exchange support provide unmatched liquidity and accessibility.

However, other players are also formidable. Several institutions offer their own gold token products, vying to attract investors seeking gold exposure via blockchain. Competition extends beyond “who better represents one ounce of gold” to product features, yield models, and ecosystem integration. For example, some products may offer staking for yields or deeper integration with DeFi protocols. The introduction of Scudo can be seen as a “lower-dimensional attack,” expanding the competitive dimension from mere store of value to actual payments and applications, potentially attracting new users focused on gold’s practicality and liquidity.

From a broader perspective, the rise of gold tokens reflects the trend of physical asset tokenization. It brings traditionally illiquid but valuable assets (like real estate, art, commodities) onto the blockchain, unlocking their financial potential. Tether Gold’s success and innovation serve as a valuable example: solid backing, excellent user experience, and broad application scenarios are key to winning the market.

Future Outlook: Where Is Digital Gold Heading?

The launch of Scudo adds an imaginative chapter to the story of gold and broader physical asset tokenization. Looking ahead, the development of digital gold may focus on several core directions.

First, payment scene penetration will be a key test of Scudo’s success. We may see more e-commerce platforms, games, or cross-border services integrated with Tether wallets accepting Scudo-based payments. Especially in high-inflation or underdeveloped financial infrastructure regions, digital gold could become a popular savings and transaction tool. This would realize Paolo Ardoino’s vision of gold and Bitcoin as “ultimate stores of value” entering daily life.

Second, deep integration with DeFi is an inevitable trend. Divisible gold tokens will become ideal collateral assets in decentralized finance. Users can deposit XAUT into lending protocols for interest or use as collateral for trading, all seamlessly with Scudo’s precision. This enhances capital efficiency for gold and stabilizes the entire DeFi ecosystem.

Finally, regulatory and compliance frameworks will be crucial for industry health. As tokens backed by physical commodities, gold tokens may face different regulatory paths compared to utility or security tokens. Proactive compliance efforts by major players like Tether and communication with regulators will help clarify boundaries and attract traditional financial institutions.

In summary, Tether’s “micro-innovation” with Scudo is part of a grander strategy. It aims not just to add a decimal place to gold tokens but to redefine gold’s role in the digital era—moving it out of safes and ETFs into circulation, becoming a vital building block for future diversified monetary systems. Between fiat and crypto narratives, digital gold is forging its own path, shining with a golden glow.

What Is Tether Gold?

Tether Gold is a cryptocurrency issued by Tether, anchored to physical gold, with the ticker XAUT. Its core mechanism is that each circulating XAUT token corresponds to one troy ounce of pure physical gold, stored in a professional third-party vault in Switzerland, in the form of standard London Good Delivery gold bars.

Compared to investing in physical gold bars or gold ETFs, Tether Gold offers unique advantages: Digital ownership: Investors hold XAUT in their blockchain wallets, owning the corresponding gold rights without physical storage, security, or insurance costs. Efficient transfer: Ownership transfers are completed instantly via blockchain transactions, enabling 24/7 global peer-to-peer transfers. High divisibility: After Scudo’s launch, investors can trade or transfer gold values as low as one-thousandth of an ounce, impossible with physical bars. Transparency and verifiability: Regular audits and storage information are publicly disclosed, increasing trust.

Investors mainly buy XAUT to gain exposure to gold prices within the crypto ecosystem, serving as a hedge against inflation and market risks. Its emergence bridges the centuries-old value consensus of gold with the digital world.

From Bitcoin to Gold: A Brief History of Physical Asset Tokenization

Physical asset tokenization is not a new concept; its development closely follows the maturity of the crypto ecosystem:

1. Concept emergence and early experiments: Around 2017-2018, projects attempted to bring real estate, art, and other assets on-chain. Due to immature technology, regulatory ambiguity, and market bubbles, most early projects failed to sustain.
2. Stablecoins laying trust foundations: The success of fiat-pegged stablecoins like USDT and USDC proved that issuing on-chain tokens backed by sufficient off-chain assets is feasible, establishing initial trust and technical frameworks for broader asset tokenization.
3. Gold as a pioneering asset: Because of its universal recognized value, standardized form, and active markets, gold became the ideal “first asset” for tokenization. Post-2019, many institutions launched gold tokens, with Tether Gold being a leading example.
4. Market differentiation and ecosystem building: The market diversified into products like PAX Gold, Perth Mint Gold Token, etc. Competition pushed issuers to not only improve backing quality but also develop payment, DeFi, and other ecosystems around the tokens. Scudo is a typical product of this phase.
5. Expansion into broader assets: After validating the model with gold, tokenization expanded into U.S. Treasuries, private credit, fund shares, and emerging assets like carbon credits. This connected traditional finance with crypto, forming a “RWA” (Real-World Asset) track viewed as a key narrative in the next bull market.