On Thursday (January 30), digital asset exchange Bitfinex announced that it has added margin trading on Tether Gold (XAUt).
What is Tether Gold?
Exactly one week earlier, Tether launched a new product called Tether Gold (XAUt), which is a crypto token — available as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain and as a TRC20 token on the TRON blockchain — representing “ownership of one troy fine ounce of physical gold on a specific gold bar” held in a Swiss vault.
Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether and Bitfinex, had this to say at the time:
There is growing demand for digital exposure to physical gold, making the launch of Tether Gold a timely innovation in the crypto ecosystem. Tether Gold provides the combined benefits of both physical and digital assets, removing the drawbacks of holding gold in more traditional ways, such as high storage costs and restricted access.
The XAUt token “can be transferred to any on-chain address from the purchasers’ Tether wallet where it is issued after purchase.” A particular gold bar(s) “will be associated with each on-chain address where Tether Gold is held.”
The allocated gold is “identifiable with a unique serial number, purity and weight” and XAUt token holders are able to verify “the details of the gold bars associated with their address” via the Tether Gold product page on the Tether website.
Margin Trading on Tether Gold
In yesterday’s press release, Bitfinex says that by launching margin trading for XAUt, it is “enabling traders to execute more advanced strategies on the metal in a digital form.”
Margin trading for Tether Gold — with up to 5x leverage — is available for pairs against US Dollar (USD), Tether (USDT), and Bitcoin (BTC), was launched at 12:00 UTC on January 30.
Also, Bitfinex stated that it has increased the maximum leverage for BTC/USD from 3.3x to 5x.
Ardoino offered this comment:
“The launch of margin trading on Tether Gold will allow more advanced trading strategies, enabling a more sophisticated means of hedging exposure and managing risk. Raising our leverage from 3.3x to 5x is a noteworthy development, and is also timely given growing interest in gold and other safe haven assets amid the recent turmoil that we’ve seen in equity markets.”
Featured Image by “PublicDomainPictures” via Pixabay
