BlockBeats News, August 4th. Tether has announced that its tokenized gold product, Tether Gold (XAU₮), saw a 9.5% increase in investor holdings in the second quarter of 2026, indicating a growing market demand for on-chain gold assets.

The data shows that despite a 14.1% decline in the price of gold in the second quarter, investors continued to increase their holdings of XAU₮, demonstrating that the market demand is not solely driven by a rising gold market. Some investors took advantage of the price correction to increase their physical gold exposure.

As of June 30, 2026, XAU₮ is fully backed 1:1 by physical gold, with a total holding of 707,747.139 troy ounces of gold, equivalent to about 22.01 metric tons, with a market value of approximately $2.837 billion.

By the end of the second quarter, 612,823.66 tokens of XAU₮ were sold, an increase of 53,225.02 tokens from the end of the first quarter's 559,598.64 tokens. This corresponds to investors adding about 1.66 tons of physical gold to their holdings, representing a 9.5% increase.

Tether stated that the gold backing XAU₮ remained unchanged throughout the quarter, with all tokens backed by at least 1 troy ounce of physical gold. The related gold is stored in Swiss vaults, including 1,759 London Good Delivery gold bars and bars of other specifications.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said that despite the largest quarterly drop in gold in 13 years, investors continued to buy XAU₮, indicating that tokenized gold is becoming a new way for investors to allocate physical gold.

Furthermore, data from Tether International SA de CV shows that the company purchased approximately 27.1 tons of gold in the first half of 2026, with an average monthly purchase of about 4.5 tons. If included in the ranking of central bank gold purchases, the holdings of about 150 tons would rank third in the global gold accumulation during the same period, following only Poland and China.