Tether Gold Audit: The Gold Checks Out, the Chain Does Not

Every XAUt is backed by an ounce of Swiss-vaulted gold. BDO Italia confirms it every quarter, down to a hundredth of an ounce. Yet between the holder and the bar there is no link outside the Tether group, apart from that one check.

Our verdict: 61/100, grade BBB. It rates how access to the gold is structured, not the gold itself.

What founders should take from it

XAUt shows how far a brand can carry a token: the largest market in its class without a single independent custodian. A new issuer will not get that credit. Institutional capital looks past the asset and asks one question: can the chain be verified without the issuer?

The metal is fine

On 30.06.2026 the XAUt reserve held 707 747,139 fine troy ounces, about 22,01 t: 1 759 London Good Delivery bars plus smaller bars. Minted supply matched the gold on every attestation date, and each address maps to bar serial numbers.

Ownership is cheap. There is no storage fee, and buying or redeeming through the issuer costs 0,25% each way. XAUt is the largest tokenized commodity at $3,04b, about 58% of the segment.

The weak point is the chain

AGCL, a Tether subsidiary, buys the gold. A custodian, also related to Tether, stores it. The custodian is not named publicly. Only the country, Switzerland, is known. The insurer and any liens on the bars are undisclosed too. LlamaRisk asked for this information when XAUt was listed on Aave in 2025. We found no public answer.

The contract adds one more point of trust. A 3-of-6 Tether multisig can upgrade the token and burn the balance of a blocked address with no timelock. No code audit has been published.

Each item has an explanation. Together they mean one thing: whether the gold belongs to holders, and stays protected if the group runs into trouble, can only be confirmed by the group itself.

In the UAE the same questions arrive through the regulator. VARA in Dubai and the ADGM framework expect a commodity-backed token to name its custodian, show the insurance behind the metal and confirm that nobody holds a prior claim over the bars. A Salvadoran licence does not carry over, so an issuer repeating this structure here would be asked for exactly what XAUt does not publish.

Between attestations, you have the issuer's word

On 13.10.2026 rwa.xyz showed 845 001 XAUt. The last confirmed reserve, on 30.06.2026, was 707 747 oz. The gap is 137 254 XAUt, about 4,27 t.

This is not an accusation. Demand is growing, new tokens are minted against new gold, and some supply on other networks may be bridged. But the backing can only be confirmed by the 30.09.2026 attestation. On a quarterly cycle, holders rely on the issuer's word between checks.

The 430 XAUt redemption floor is not the issue

Redeeming gold from the issuer starts at 430 XAUt, one bar. That is the industry norm: PAXG physical delivery also starts at a bar. Small holders exit through the market, where arbitrage keeps the price close to gold. On the audit date the discount was 0,29%.

The market has been tested. In Q2 2026 gold fell 14,1%, and XAUt customer holdings grew 9,5%.

Licensed, but for a narrow audience

Since January 2025 the issuer, TG Commodities, has operated in El Salvador under the CNAD register. The regime requires full reserves and quarterly attestation, but it is young. XAUt is closed to US citizens and residents and to Canadian residents. We found no MiCA authorisation. Disputes go only to confidential arbitration in the BVI, with class actions excluded.

Five decisions that close the gap

• Name the custodian and the insurer, and confirm there are no liens.
• Obtain a legal opinion that the asset stays outside the issuer's insolvency estate.
• Put a timelock on contract upgrades and publish a code audit.
• Reconcile reserves against supply more often than quarterly, or move reconciliation on-chain.
• Set a redemption SLA and spell out when redemptions can be suspended.

For XAUt these steps would lift the score to about 76, grade A. For a new RWA token they belong in the design from day one. Rebuilding trust after launch costs more than building it into the model.

We run these structure reviews out of Dubai, so if you are issuing a gold- or commodity-backed token in the region, we can go through the custody chain, the attestation cycle and the contract roles before the model is locked.

Audit under 8Blocks methodology version 2, based on public data as of 13.10.2026. Full report with criterion-level scores and sources: full XAUT audit. Not investment advice.