👁 What kind of gold has arrived on TON?

⚫️ Yesterday, many reported the arrival of “tokenized gold” in TON under the name XAUt0. However, as noted by @xRocket’s founder, some descriptions have been inaccurate. For example, you might see headlines like “Tether launches ‘next-gen gold,’ and TON is the first to receive it.” But what actually happened?

⚫️ In addition to the familiar dollar-pegged stablecoins, there are also tokens pegged to the price of gold. These can be backed by real gold bars stored in a bank, allowing crypto users to invest in gold through a regular wallet. This reflects the concept of RWA.

⚫️ Tether, best known for its USDT stablecoin, launched a gold-backed stablecoin called Tether Gold (XAUt) back in 2020. (“AU” is the chemical symbol for gold in the periodic table.) Unlike USDT, however, XAUt is only available on one blockchain—Ethereum.

⚫️ A newer project called USDT0 recently set out to bring USDT to blockchains not officially supported by Tether. The mechanism works like this: a certain amount of USDT is locked in Ethereum, and an equivalent amount of a new token, USDT0, is minted on the desired blockchain. This is made possible by the OFT (Omnichain Fungible Token) standard from the LayerZero protocol.

⚫️ Now, that same project has decided to bring XAUt to TON. The idea is the same: lock original XAUt on Ethereum and issue an equivalent amount of XAUt0 in TON.

⚫️ It’s important to understand that USDT0 is not a Tether project (though it has received Tether’s approval). So it’s incorrect to say “Tether is launching” anything—Tether itself has not launched anything new. Likewise, it’s misleading to claim that “TON is the first to receive next-gen gold.” XAUt has existed on Ethereum for five years—TON is simply receiving an OFT version of it.

⚫️ Whether or not to invest in this version of gold is up to you. There are risks from multiple angles: What if something happens to Tether’s gold reserves and the original XAUt loses value? Or what if there are problems with LayerZero, causing trust in XAUt0 to falter even if XAUt remains fine?

💡 Still, the very ability to “invest in gold directly from TON” is an intriguing development. Gold prices don’t stand still: over the past year, an ounce of gold has risen from about $2,300 to $3,300. If the ability to easily convert Toncoin into XAUt0 had existed a year ago, it would’ve turned out to be a highly profitable option.

@thedailyton