Tether is shutting down its gold-backed stablecoin aUSDT and the Alloy platform

Anyone here holding these gold-backed stablecoins? If so, now’s the time to cash out because Tether is wrapping up this project. Looks like it wasn't as profitable as they hoped, so instead of potentially losing more, they're choosing to shut it down and stick to their regular stablecoins. It kinda shows that chasing trends isn't always the best move. Your project needs to stand out on its own before investors throw their cash at it. So it’s really up to you all. I’d recommend redeeming it ASAP to avoid any headaches and then put that cash into something else.

I've never even heard of aUSDT. Seems like it's a new gold backed asset that was issued in a collaboration with someone and has a capitalisation of just $40m. I think you could treat it as an experiment. Their main gold backed asset was always XAUT. It has existed for at about 8 years (I think?) and currently has a capitalisation of almost $3 billion. Honestly I can't imagine why anyone would purchase the other option. Must be some kind of attraction incentives? Anyway, such position wouldn't be left unsupervised.

wait what happened here Tether is the most profitable businnes in crypto in my opinion why they remove XAUT Their core gold-backed token, XAUT is highly liquid, and sitting at a massive $3.3 billion market cap. So this one is profitable but maybe in my opinion they remove XAUT because people arent really using it and second maybe just maybe people dont have trust in XAUT and they prefer a real gold

Profitability may not be the primary issue; regulatory constraints are a significant concern. Often, supporting gold-backed assets requires additional legislation that Tether may not adhere to. Furthermore, the lack of legal and financial due diligence, coupled with the potential misuse of client funds, could be further reasons to disregard anything associated with Tether.

Alloy by Tether has low demand, so they don't want to lose more money in the future & choose to sunset it. For those of us who have no business with the platform, your information has no real significance. However, for those who have opened positions, it's about the potential loss of assets. In their latest update article they stated that: "Existing users will continue to be able to return their aUSD₮ and remove their XAU₮ for the next three months, subject to the applicable Alloy by Tether Terms of Use. Starting on 17 September 2026, customers who have not returned their aUSD₮ will no longer be able to recover their XAU₮ through the platform."

The last part of your statement should be the real issue in my opinion, people will definitely prefer real gold to a stablecoin backed by gold. I didn’t expect that Tether will abandon the project considering the liquidity it has and the market capitalisation but it seems there is more we don't know which may be reason for their decision.

the last speech that I have to see about this argument was around in ... april? and clearly in some places or area the idea of a (real) digital gold was great! by absurd in some place this can be seen as the first medium to get people involved with bitcoin or in general crypto currencies. I am not really surprised for this move but for sure its another "indicator" of some interests and idea in the space :: "follow the money" they said

Where does it say that they are removing XAUT? As far as I know and from what I have read, they are just stopping support for the gold-backed stablecoin aUSDT which they claim has not had much activity. Honestly, it's my first time getting to know about it. What was the point of a gold-backed stablecoin even (a stablecoin which is a token that is backed by token XAUT which is backed by gold )?

Well if you read it again carefully, you might notice that XAUT isn't going anywhere. It's just aUSDT which gets an axe. And good riddance, because i never even got the purpose of that. Why would you need an usd-pegged token (over)collateralized with XAUt, when you can collateralize USD pegged tokens with actual USD? XAUT being collateralized by diamonds would make as much sense as aUSDT.

This token was half assed token that overlap with other core product to begin with, no wonder they are shutting it down beside the low demand. If people want gold associated risk collateral, they might as well buy XAUT to get potential upside, not overcollateralized synthetic stablecoin like aUSDT. Why don't they put the reserve to their core product USDT as backing and print more USDT earlier is always my question, good thing they re-assessed their strategy.

XAUT is a token backed by gold while aUSDT is a stable coin backed by gold. 1 XAUT represent 1 troy ounce of gold while 1 aUSDT is represent 1 USD, however, this stable coin backed by gold not USD as its reserves. I think you just miss understand it. As for OP, this is just a business straetgy. aUSDT lacked of demand. So tether puts all of its focus on USDT as its main business.

My best guess is that they're shutting it down due to low demand. Tether is going to be a public company soon if they continue their plans to go public so they'd have to wind down projects that are not contributing positively to their books since they'd have to present their books prior to doing an IPO. Imo, they have really good things going on with their stablecoin with only Circle's USDC as the only major contender. They should focus on that.

Tether have history of winding down services in low contributing sector. It winded down USDT support in several low demand blockchains few years ago, so that make sense. However, I doubt about the IPO. Tether seems to be downsizing their capital raise due to bad crypto market. Their CEO said they don't need external capital which imply they don't want to do IPO because they company is very liquid. Maybe just to increase efficiency and lowering operational costs.

Well, it was always known that this would not work, because there is no "gold" you are giving or getting. You can actually give dollars, and get dollars when it's USDT, but when it's gold, it's all based off of just price of gold and nothing more. In reality, you are still dealing with dollars, you are just dealing with dollars that would be based on gold. You give them dollars, they use that dollar to buy gold digitally, even they do not have the gold, they have gold backed assets, meaning if gold goes up, their assets go up. So this was always not working in theory, and they tried it anyways and of course failed.