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1. Tether Gold arrives on Anchorage Digital Prime
Anchorage Digital said on Wednesday, November 11, that its institutional clients can now hold, trade and borrow against Tether Gold (XAU₮), a token backed by physical gold. The crypto firm described the launch as full lifecycle support for tokenized gold and said XAU₮ is the first of several tokenized real-world assets it plans to offer through Anchorage Digital Prime, its platform for institutions.
All three functions, custody, trading and pledging, were live as of the announcement. Clients can keep the token in custody with Anchorage, buy and sell it through the firm's own trading desk, and post it as collateral, including to borrow US dollars or USDT, the dollar stablecoin issued by Tether.
The move puts one of the best-known gold tokens inside the regulated custody and financing stack that Anchorage offers to funds, trading firms and other professional investors. It also marks the start of a wider push by the company into tokenized versions of traditional assets.
2. What is Tether Gold?
Tether Gold is a digital token designed to represent ownership of physical gold, with each token tied to gold held in reserve. It is issued by TG Commodities S.A. de C.V., an entity in the Tether group, and in Anchorage's case it is supported on the Ethereum blockchain.
Tokenized gold aims to combine the long-standing appeal of the metal with the practical features of crypto assets. A token can be transferred between parties at any hour, settled on a blockchain rather than through a chain of intermediaries, and held in the same custody accounts as other digital assets. For institutions, that can make gold easier to move and to use as collateral than bars sitting in a vault.
Assets of this kind are often grouped under the label real-world assets, or RWAs: tokens that represent claims on things that exist outside a blockchain, such as commodities, bonds or fund shares. Anchorage has said Tether Gold is the first such asset it will support in this manner, with more planned.
Gold itself has long served as a store of value and a reserve asset for central banks, investors and businesses. Traditional gold markets, however, operate through a mix of exchanges, over-the-counter dealers and vaulting arrangements that follow conventional business hours and settlement cycles. A blockchain token tied to the metal is intended to bridge that gap, keeping the underlying exposure while removing some of the friction of moving the physical asset or the paperwork that represents it.
3. Where clients can hold the token
Clients have two custody options. The first is Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., which received conditional approval for a national trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in January 2021. The OCC is the US federal regulator responsible for nationally chartered banks and trust companies, and the charter allows Anchorage to provide custody under federal banking supervision.
The second option is Anchorage Digital Singapore, which holds a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city-state's central bank and financial regulator. That license category covers firms providing larger-scale payment services, including those involving digital payment tokens.
Offering both entities gives clients in different jurisdictions a regulated place to keep the token, an important consideration for institutions that face rules on where and with whom their assets can be held.
Custody is often the first question institutions ask about any digital asset. Many funds and corporate treasuries operate under internal policies or external rules that require assets to sit with a regulated custodian, separate from the trading firm or the investment manager. A token that cannot be held in such an account is often out of reach for those investors, regardless of how attractive the underlying asset may be.
4. How trading works on the principal desk
Clients buy and sell XAU₮ through Anchorage's principal desk. Nathan McCauley, the company's co-founder and chief executive, explained in written answers that the desk sets prices and fills orders itself rather than passing them to an outside trading venue.
Under a principal model, the firm acts as the counterparty to a client's trade, buying from sellers and selling to buyers out of its own book. For institutional clients, that can mean a single point of contact for execution and a price quoted directly by the firm rather than one discovered on a public order book.
Beyond outright trades, clients can also post XAU₮ as collateral for derivatives positions, letting them use their gold holdings to support other exposures without first converting the token into cash.
Using the token as derivatives collateral fits a familiar pattern in professional markets, where traders routinely post assets they already own to back margin requirements. Gold has a long history in that role in traditional finance, and a token version allows the same idea to operate inside a digital asset account rather than through a separate commodities relationship.
5. How borrowing against Tether Gold works
Clients who hold XAU₮ at Anchorage Digital Bank can pledge it and borrow either US dollars or USDT from other clients of the bank. McCauley identified the Anchorage Digital Prime Financing desk as one counterparty that can provide such loans.
He was explicit that the bank itself is not the lender. Anchorage's role is to provide custody and the infrastructure that verifies the collateral is in place. The borrowing and lending parties agree the commercial terms between themselves, including loan-to-value ratios, interest rates and minimum loan sizes. Anchorage does not publish those terms.
That structure separates the safekeeping of the asset from the credit relationship. A lender can rely on the fact that the pledged gold token is held by a regulated custodian, while the decision about how much to lend and at what price stays with the parties to the loan.
For borrowers, the appeal is liquidity without a sale. Pledging gold rather than selling it means a holder can raise dollars or stablecoins for other purposes while keeping their exposure to the metal's price.
The loan-to-value ratio is the key number in any collateralized loan. It expresses how much can be borrowed as a share of the collateral's value, and it determines how much room a borrower has before a fall in the collateral's price forces them to add more or repay part of the loan. Because Anchorage leaves those ratios to the parties involved, terms may differ from one arrangement to the next depending on the lender's assessment of risk.
6. Demand for tokenized gold has grown more than tenfold
Anchorage says XAU₮ is the most active tokenized gold product on its trading desk. McCauley said the firm does not break out trading volume by individual asset, so no dollar figures were given.
He did offer a measure of growth: institutional activity in XAU₮ is more than ten times higher than it was a year earlier. He added that the flow runs in both directions, with clients selling the token as well as buying it, rather than reflecting a one-way rush into the asset.
The growth figure gives a sense of direction for institutional interest at the firm, even though the absolute size of that business remains undisclosed.
7. Who is buying and why
McCauley pointed to two broad groups driving demand. The first is made up of businesses that already deal in gold, such as precious-metals dealers and mining companies, for whom a token offers a new way to move and finance an asset they know well.
For dealers and miners, the ability to borrow against gold without selling it can be especially useful, since their businesses already carry large holdings of the metal and their need for cash does not always line up with their willingness to part with inventory.
The second group includes funds, trading firms and family offices, investors who may use XAU₮ as part of broader portfolios and want it to behave like their other digital holdings.
According to McCauley, the conversation with clients has shifted sharply. A year ago, he said, the question was whether institutions could hold tokenized gold at all. Now clients want to trade it around the clock and borrow against it without giving up their gold exposure. The new borrowing feature is aimed squarely at that second request.
8. Anchorage's existing ties to Tether
The launch adds to an already close relationship between the two companies. Anchorage Digital Bank issues USA₮, a US-focused stablecoin that Tether established with Bo Hines as its chief executive.
Tether is also an investor in Anchorage. In February, it put $100 million into the company at a valuation of $4.2 billion.
With this launch, Anchorage now supports Tether Gold across custody, trading and financing, while its bank continues to serve as issuer of USA₮, linking the two firms on both the gold and dollar sides of Tether's product range.
9. What comes next for Anchorage's tokenized asset plans
Anchorage has framed Tether Gold as the opening step rather than a one-off addition. The company says it intends to support several more tokenized real-world assets through Anchorage Digital Prime, although it did not name which ones or give a timeline.
For now, the gold token gives the firm a test case for offering the full set of institutional services, custody, execution, collateral and lending, around a single tokenized asset. How clients use the borrowing facility, and whether demand keeps growing at the pace McCauley described, will shape how quickly further assets follow.