Latest: ‘like Sats For Bitcoin’: Tether Creates Tiny Gold Unit As Onchain...

The stablecoin issuer says its Scudo unit could make gold easier to transact digitally as prices surge and institutional demand accelerates.

Tether has introduced a new unit of account tied to its digital gold token, XAUT, in a move aimed at lowering barriers to fractional gold ownership at a time when institutional investors and central banks are accumulating the precious metal at record levels.

On Tuesday, the stablecoin issuer unveiled Scudo, a unit of account representing one-thousandth of a troy ounce of gold.

Each Scudo corresponds to 1/1,000 of an XAUT token, Tether’s gold-backed asset. XAUT is supported by more than 1,300 gold bars held in custody and currently has a market capitalization of roughly $2.3 billion, according to Tether.

Tether said the introduction of Scudo is designed to make gold ownership more accessible. While gold has long been viewed as a reliable store of value, direct ownership has historically been constrained by storage, custody and divisibility issues.

Although XAUT already addressed many of those challenges by tokenizing physical gold, Scudo is intended to further simplify smaller, onchain transactions backed by the metal.

According to the company, the move represents a step toward making gold more easily transactable on modern digital rails, rather than serving solely as a long-term store of value.

Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s chief executive, described gold as “the ultimate store of value alongside Bitcoin,” following a record-breaking year for bullion prices, which climbed above $4,550 per troy ounce.

In a social media post, Ardoino compared Scudo to satoshis, the smallest unit of account for Bitcoin (BTC).

Related: Tether solvency fears are ‘misplaced’ as company sits on large surplus: CoinShares

Source: CoinTelegraph