Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, is storing gold in a Cold War-era nuclear bunker in Switzerland. The company is stockpiling more than a ton of the precious metal every week in the Swiss mountains to back its gold-pegged XAUT Token—an attention-grabbing security measure once employed by a Bitcoin firm from crypto’s early days.
Tether currently owns an estimated $24 billion in gold, the most of any holder outside of governments, central banks, and major ETFs. As a new Fortune magazine feature reveals, the gold hoarding reflects a belief on the part of Tether’s CEO that Western economies are unraveling and that his firm can be an anchor of stability in an unstable world.
