Catenaa, Saturday, January 10, 2026- Tether has launched Scudo, a new unit of account for its gold-backed token Tether Gold (XAUT), designed to simplify pricing and transfers of fractional gold onchain.
One Scudo represents one-thousandth of a troy ounce of gold, or one-thousandth of an XAUT token. The unit allows users to denominate transactions and prices in whole or partial Scudos, avoiding cumbersome decimals for small transfers. Tether said the system is modeled after Bitcoin’s satoshi, which makes handling fractions of a Bitcoin more practical.
The move comes amid a strong year for gold. Spot prices peaked above $4,550 in late December 2025 and were trading near $4,485 in early January, outperforming equities and major cryptocurrencies. The S&P 500 rose just over 16% last year, while Bitcoin declined roughly 6%.
Gold-backed tokens have seen growing demand, with a combined market capitalization of roughly $4.3 billion, slightly below a December 2025 high of $4.4 billion. Tether Gold remains the largest product in the category, accounting for approximately half of the total market value.
The Scudo rollout is intended to make gold-backed tokens more practical for smaller transactions and broader onchain use as tokenized gold adoption grows.
