XAUT’s largest-ever issuance comes amid a global spike in tokenized gold adoption and renewed safe-haven demand.
Tether Gold (XAUT) executed the largest single-day supply expansion in tokenized gold history. On August 8, XAUT’s circulating supply jumped by 129,047.917 tokens, worth approximately $436.94 million. This move increased the total market cap of tokenized gold by 20% in one day. This record-breaking issuance pushed XAUT’s market cap ahead of Paxos Gold (PAXG), making it the leading gold-backed crypto asset by value.
The timing of this expansion is notable. A week ago, the U.S. reenabled tariffs on multiple countries, while weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs data fueled concerns over the labor market and stoked safe-haven demand. This lifted both physical gold prices and user activity across tokenized gold assets.
XAUT Becomes the Most Actively Traded Tokenized Gold Asset
Although XAUT has long been one of the largest tokenized gold assets by market cap, it historically lagged behind PAXG in both trading activity and user engagement. In 2025, the competitive landscape became even more challenging as Kinesis Gold (KAU) rapidly captured momentum, posting an explosive $5.5 billion in trading volume in Q2 2025, outperforming XAUT.
However, the situation has changed in Q3 2025. Starting July 25, XAUT began confidently surpassing both PAXG and KAU in daily trading volume. A day before that, Tether published its Q2 attestation report confirming that XAUT was backed by more than 7.66 tons of physical gold. The report appeared to boost market confidence in XAUT’s reserves and transparency, prompting traders and investors to rotate toward the asset from other tokenized gold tokens.
XAUT has also been outpacing PAXG in attracting new tokenized gold holders. So far in 2025, the number of XAUT holders has surged 173%, compared to a 29% increase for PAXG. While PAXG still maintains a larger user base, the gap is closing quickly, shrinking from 15:1 at the start of the year to just 7:1 today.
Tariffs, Geopolitics, and Macro Backdrop Fuel Tokenized Gold Demand
Tokenized gold is once again entering favorable market conditions for its expansion. Earlier this year, Donald Trump’s tariff announcements sparked a multi-week rally in tokenized gold volumes, with PAXG, XAUT, and KAU seeing triple- and quadruple-digit growth. More recently, geopolitical uncertainty, Middle East tensions, and now softer U.S. labor data have kept gold’s safe-haven appeal front and center.
This means the latest supply expansion suggests that Tether is positioning XAUT to meet growing demand from both retail and institutional segments. This demand could come not only from crypto-native audiences, but from gold ETF users, since tokenized gold has been recently capturing their momentum.
For instance, in Q2 2025, the tokenized gold’s total volume exceeded $19 billion, outpacing the quarterly growth rates of SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and iShares Gold Trust (IAU) for the fourth straight quarter. The gap in trading activity between tokenized gold and IAU has shrunk from 5x in mid-2024 to just 2x in mid-2025.
The Road Ahead
If gold prices remain strong and macro risks persist, tokenized gold could see further market share gains from ETFs, especially among crypto-native investors seeking real-world assets without traditional intermediaries. XAUT’s expansion also highlights a potential shift from passive holdings toward more liquid, utility-driven use cases, such as DeFi collateral and on-chain settlements.
With volumes accelerating, adoption broadening, and competition with PAXG intensifying, the latest supply milestone may not just be a record for XAUT, it could be a sign that tokenized gold is entering a new growth phase.