Tether (CRYPTO: USDT) is making a move that crypto insiders should understand but Wall Street is completely sleeping on. While the U.S. Congress finalizes stablecoin rules and Treasury wrestles with foreign-issued digital dollars, Tether has deployed over $300 million into gold royalties: these are hard assets that can’t be frozen, can’t be sanctioned, and sit outside the regulatory perimeter. It now owns nearly a third of Elemental Altus Royalties (OTC:ELEMD), holds significant stakes in Versamet Royalties (OTC:VRMTD) (OTC:VRMTF) and Metalla Royalty & Streaming (AMEX:MTA), and controls claims on hundreds of gold mines spanning four continents.
This is much more than portfolio tinkering. Tether is making a smart move that the future of money will involve gold, and it is building infrastructure that could power the next generation of stablecoins or give the company an escape hatch if regulators shut the door on the traditional dollar-backed model.
Why a Stablecoin Giant Is Betting on Gold Mines
To understand what Tether is doing, you need to appreciate the scale of its profit engine. With more than $100 billion in USDT backed primarily by short-term U.S. Treasuries, Tether rakes in an estimated $5–6 billion a year in interest income. That is more profit than most blue-chip financial institutions and multiple times what the largest listed gold royalty company earns.
But every Treasury bill Tether buys also increases its vulnerability. If the U.S. government decides it does not like offshore stablecoins, it can freeze or restrict access to those assets with a phone call. The 2022 Russian sanctions showed how quickly that can happen. Reserves inside the Western financial system are not as safe as they once seemed, especially for companies operating in regulatory gray zones.
Gold royalties offer a different way to solve that problem. Instead of owning and running mines, royalty companies finance mining projects in exchange for a percentage of future revenue or the right to buy metal at a discount. Once production starts, they collect cash without dealing with labor disputes, equipment failures or environmental lawsuits. The miner takes the risk and the royalty holder gets paid.
Elemental Altus, where Tether now holds about 32 percent of the shares, manages more than 200 royalty and streaming contracts, most of them tied to precious metals. In the current year the company has reported that revenue more than doubled and operating cash flow jumped nearly tenfold as several projects moved from development into full production. Versamet, Tether’s second-largest position at 12.7 percent, is targeting more than 20,000 gold-equivalent ounces of annual production by next year. Metalla brings another 100-plus royalties, including exposure to some of the world’s longest-life gold projects.
For Tether, these investments do more than diversify the portfolio. They convert a chunk of dollar-denominated interest income into inflation-sensitive, gold-linked cash flows that sit outside the reach of U.S. regulators.
Tether’s Strategic Positioning, from Treasury-Backed Stablecoin to Gold Royalty Powerhouse
The Regulatory Clock Is Ticking
The timing matters because the rules are changing fast. Earlier this year, the United States passed the first federal framework for stablecoins. Under the new law, reserves must be held in cash, Treasury bills, bank deposits or money market funds. Gold does not qualify. Neither do mining royalties.
At first glance, that seems to kill any plan to use these royalty stakes as stablecoin backing. But Tether is not a U.S. company. It operates from El Salvador and treats USDT as an offshore product, while preparing a separate, compliant stablecoin for the American market.
The key loophole lies in how the law treats foreign issuers. There is a “reciprocal treatment” clause that could allow stablecoins from jurisdictions with comparable regulations to operate in the United States without full domestic licensing. The problem is that nobody knows yet which countries will qualify or when those decisions will be made.
Most policy watchers expect clarity by mid-2026, with potential enforcement actions following within roughly 18 months. If the Treasury Department decides that El Salvador’s regulatory framework does not measure up, U.S. exchanges and banks could be forced to phase out USDT trading pairs. That would cut Tether off from the world’s largest crypto market and crater demand for the token.
In that scenario, Tether’s gold royalty portfolio stops looking like a side project and starts looking like a lifeline. By building a separate investment arm with exposure to hard assets and commodity-linked income, Tether is preserving the option to launch gold-backed or hybrid stablecoins that do not depend solely on dollar reserves. If USDT gets boxed out of the United States, Tether will already own the infrastructure it needs to pivot.
Gold Is Having a Moment, and Not Just With Retail Buyers
Tether’s move also lines up with a broader shift in how money is stored and moved around the world. Over the past few years, central banks, led by China, Turkey, India and Russia, have been net buyers of gold on a scale not seen in decades. Those purchases helped push gold above 4,000 dollars an ounce earlier this year, a record high that has held even as equities chopped sideways and bonds sold off.
This pattern looks less like a typical inflation or recession trade and more like a structural change in how reserves are managed. Emerging-market governments are actively reducing their reliance on the dollar and gold is the obvious alternative. It is neutral, liquid and cannot be frozen by Washington.
At the same time, governments are starting to experiment with digital gold. Kyrgyzstan launched a state-backed, gold-collateralized digital currency just weeks ago. The project is small, but it proves the concept that policymakers are willing to combine the credibility of gold with the convenience of tokenized payments.
That is the market Tether seems to be positioning for. If regulators eventually allow large-scale gold-backed stablecoins, the winner will not necessarily be the issuer with the loudest marketing campaign. It is more likely to be the one that already controls diversified, reliable sources of gold-linked cash flow and has proven experience managing billions of dollars in tokenized liabilities.
Tether is building that position now. Instead of buying bullion and locking it in a vault, it is buying into the revenue streams from dozens of producing mines. That gives it leverage to both the gold price and to production growth, without the headaches of actually running a mining company.
The Trade: Three Names on Traders’ Radars
So what does this mean for anyone putting capital to work?
The most direct way to express this theme is through the royalty stocks that Tether has backed. Elemental Altus Royalties (TSX-V: ELE) is the flagship position, with Tether holding nearly a third of the company. Versamet Royalties (TSX-V: VMET) announced its Tether partnership in November and the stock jumped on the news as analysts scrambled to update coverage. Metalla Royalty & Streaming (MTA) is the most liquid of the three and trades on major North American exchanges with a market capitalization in the hundreds of millions.
These are not stable, dividend-paying blue chips. They are small-cap royalty platforms with thin daily volume. When news hits, whether a new deal, an upgraded forecast or another Tether stake increase, prices can move quickly. The other side of that coin is obvious: spreads are wide, liquidity dries up in risk-off environments and exits can be messy. If you are going to trade these names, position size and discipline around stops matter.
Beyond the individual stocks, Tether’s behavior is a useful signal for understanding where gold and stablecoins are heading. Central banks are buying. Governments are experimenting with tokenized gold. And now the largest private stablecoin issuer is directing hundreds of millions into the royalty sector. Taken together, those moves point toward an expanded role for gold in the global financial system rather than a shrinking one.
The regulatory angle adds another layer. Any public statement from the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve or European regulators about foreign stablecoin frameworks will move these names. A tough stance on El Salvador’s regime could hit anything connected to Tether, at least in the short term. A more permissive interpretation would buy Tether years to keep building, and the royalty stocks would likely reprice higher as that timeline extends.
What Tether Sees That the Market Does Not
Tether’s pivot into gold royalties goes well beyond publicity. The company is hedging against a future in which dollar-backed stablecoins face growing regulatory pressure and gold plays a larger role in both traditional finance and digital money.
For traders, the takeaway is not to buy every gold stock Tether touches. The point is that when a company sitting on 100 billion dollars in liabilities and generating billions a year in profit starts redirecting that capital into hard-asset cash flows, it is worth asking why. Tether appears to be preparing for a world where stablecoins need more than short-term Treasuries to survive and where the line between digital assets and commodity backing becomes much thinner.
Whether you trade gold, crypto or the intersection of both, that shift is already underway. The open question is how quickly it accelerates and whether you will be positioned when it does.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security or digital asset.
Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
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