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Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, stored gold during the Cold War in a nuclear bunker in Switzerland. The company is funding more than a ton of the precious metal every week in the mountains of Switzerland to support the gold-backed XAUT Token—an attention-grabbing security measure previously used by a Bitcoin company from the crypto’s early days.
Tether currently owns an estimated $24 billion in gold, the most of anyone outside of governments, central banks, and large ETFs. As a NEW luck part of the magazine reveals, the gold hoarding shows a belief on the part of Tether’s CEO that the economies of the West are broken and that his firm can be an anchor of stability in an unstable world.
The company’s use of Swiss vaults to hold approximately 140 tons of gold—which backs its gold token but also forms part of its own hoard—coincided with a record precious metal rally.
This is not the first time that the crypto world has flocked to Switzerland. One of the first crypto custody firms, Xapo, will keep customers’ Bitcoins in a bunker under a mountain in Switzerland. The company was founded by Argentine Wences Casares, who was at the elbows of the original Bitcoin crowd, in 2013. He sold the custody part of the business to Coinbase in 2019.
During this rally, gold rose by 83% last year, even Bitcoin-the so-called “digital gold-posted a 20% decrease. The precious metal even beat the original cryptocurrency in the long term, as gold is by 174% in the last five years, while Bitcoin has risen 142% since then.
Investors are betting against the dollar, which is a recipe for success for those in the crypto world. Instead, traders poured money into gold and abandoned Bitcoin. Young investors say cryptocurrency is the future of finance and a way to get rich, fast. In their fury, gold buyers, who are mostly associated with the older generation, cashed in the winnings.
Last year was a letdown for crypto enthusiasts, and 2026 won’t be much better. Bitcoin the nearly 35% since October to its current price of about $83,000 according to Binance. Some cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Solana also decreased by 30% and 37%, respectively, in the last three months.
An analyst argued that Bitcoin could sink further, given the turbulent macroeconomic environment. “I do not think that the low 70s is from the question of Bitcoin – not now specifically, that will depend a lot on what happens in Iran and the general general sentiment,” said Russell Thompson, CIO of the Hilbert Group.
