USDt market capitalization surges, can Tether's gold stablecoin XAUt become the "digital gold"?

Recently, the market capitalization of USDt has been growing rapidly. Multiple factors are driving its market capitalization to rise continuously, including increased demand from cryptocurrency traders for margin trading, usage in some gray industries, and demand for USD in certain countries or regions. However, aside from the widely noticed USDt, other asset stablecoins issued by Tether are relatively unknown.

According to official data, in addition to USDt, Tether has also issued stablecoins pegged to the Euro, Chinese Yuan, and Gold: EURt, CNHt, and XAUt. Among them, both EURt and CNHt have relatively limited market capitalization and trading volume.

However, the performance of XAUt, which was launched at the end of January this year, has been quite impressive. In just over 4 months, its market capitalization has reached approximately 86 million USD, with a 24-hour trading volume exceeding 110,000 USD, and it is currently listed on 5 exchanges.

The rapid growth of XAUt in a short period is mainly due to the safe-haven demand brought about by the global economic crisis. Each XAUt token corresponds to 1 ounce of physical gold. Investors can conveniently invest in gold through XAUt without paying custody fees and can also redeem physical gold. In addition, XAUt can be traded 24 hours a day, and the minimum unit can be divided up to six decimal places, which has driven its rapid development.

Currently, major trading platforms mainly focus on derivatives of XAUt, including perpetual contracts, leveraged trading, and more. Some platforms also plan to introduce the Lightning Network to further enhance the trading efficiency of XAUt.

Although XAUt has performed well, industry insiders generally believe it is difficult to reach the market capitalization scale of USDt. The main reasons include the greater volatility of gold and the challenges of issuing stablecoins that are pegged to gold compared to those pegged to fiat currency. However, there are views that XAUt could potentially reach a market capitalization of several billion USD in the future.

XAUt still faces some challenges during its development, such as issues with gold supply shortages. Whether Tether can successfully create the "digital gold" brand through XAUt in the future still needs time to verify.