Tether is leveraging its $23 billion gold reserves by introducing its tokenized product, Tether Gold (XAUT), to crypto lender Ledn. Ledn will support XAUT alongside Bitcoin and Tether's stablecoin USDT, with plans to enable borrowing against XAUT later this year. Each XAUT token represents one troy ounce of gold stored in Swiss vaults, and Tether aims to monetize its substantial gold holdings by offering gold-backed loans, a domain traditionally dominated by central banks and major financial institutions. By tokenizing physical gold, Tether and Ledn propose that the asset can serve as digital collateral, similar to Bitcoin, thus unlocking liquidity without necessitating a sale. This approach mirrors Ledn's existing model for Bitcoin-backed loans, where client collateral is maintained 1:1 and not used for yield generation, distinguishing its services from those of former competitors affected by the 2022 crypto downturn.