Major gold holder launches self-custody wallet

Tether, the crypto company best known for its fiat- and gold-pegged stablecoins, announced the launch of a self-custodial digital wallet on Apr. 14.

A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that tries to stabilize its value by being pegged to a “stable” asset like a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar or a commodity like gold.

Related: Explained: What is a stablecoin?

The digital asset company offers several stablecoins:

• USDT, a dollar-pegged stablecoin

• USAT, a federally regulated, dollar-pegged stablecoin

• EURT, a Euro-pegged stablecoin

• XAUT, a stablecoin pegged to one troy ounce of gold

USDT is the world’s largest stablecoin with a market capitalization of $184.7 million. As the stablecoin needs to be backed by reliable liquid assets, Tether has become one of the largest holders of U.S. debt, including short-term U.S. Treasuries.

XAUT also needs to be backed by gold reserves, with Tether becoming one of the largest non-sovereign gold holders in the world. With the market cap of $2.6 billion, it is the world’s leading gold token.

As of Dec. 31, 2025, Tether reported the XAUT custodian holding a total of 520,089.350 fine troy ounces of gold.

As per Tether, the company’s technology is used by more than 570 million people across more than 160 countries as of March 2026. Each quarter, tens of millions of new wallets get added.

As users demand a higher level of security to hold digital tokens, Tether has launched a digital wallet for the purpose.

A self-custodial digital wallet, tether.wallet brings Tether’s global financial infrastructure directly into the hands of its users, the company said.

The newly launched wallet supports the following digital assets:

• USDT on Ethereum, Polygon, Plasma, and Arbitrum

• USAT on Ethereum

• XAUT on Ethereum, Polygon, Plasma, and Arbitrum

• Bitcoin (BTC) on-chain and via the Lightning Network

Several other blockchains will be added to the wallet after this initial release, Tether said.

Users can send funds using a simple identifier such as [email protected] as the system does away with long, error-prone wallet addresses.

They can complete transactions without holding separate network or gas tokens. Fees are paid directly in the asset being transferred, removing common friction points.

A fully self-custodial wallet, tether.wallet ensures:

“Users should be able to send value as easily as sending a message, without relying on intermediaries and without giving up control of their assets. tether.wallet is “the People’s Wallet” because it truly reflects the natural evolution of Tether’s role,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.

tether.wallet is built on top of Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK) that allows any humans, machines, and AI agents to build, use, and control self-custodial digital asset wallets.

Related: Tether CEO launches new US-based stablecoin

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Apr 14, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.