Back in November 2019, representatives of Tether, the issuer of USDT's stablecoin, said they were planning to issue a new cryptocurrency, which price would be pegged to gold. And on January 23, 2020, as part of its press release, the company announced the official launch of the new XAU₮ stablecoin.
According to a statement of Tether's technical director, Paolo Ardoino, each new XAU coin gives the ownership to the troy ounce of gold (approximately 31.1 grams). And it is not abstract gold, but concrete ingots that are stored in a special Swiss warehouse. Moreover, the company completely controls this storage but does not takes extra fees for its use.
This is an extremely original approach to working with gold in general, as it greatly facilitates its owners control over storage, use and transfer. And it is cheaper because usually, the storage of assets in gold requires some material costs.
The new stablecoin will be available in the Ethereum (ERC-20) and Tron (TRC20) blockchains. It has been announced that it can be exchanged for dollars, USDT, and bitcoin.
However, this is not the first cryptocurrency, which value is provided by gold. Before Tether, similar projects were developed by Digix, Paxos and CoinShares.
According to preliminary plans, this cryptocurrency promises to be more stable in the conditions of the global financial crisis and other economic shocks. However, at the exact moment, investors still prefer the stablecoins tied to the US dollar.
The use of real assets makes the price of cryptocurrency much more stable and predictable. Moreover, the pegging to gold returns us to the traditional "gold standard" from which the modern banking system has shifted in favor of the fiat currency.
However, cryptocurrencies with their limited issue are much more effective in this model than a traditional currency, which issue is regulated by both economic reasons and political motives.