ADGM designates Tether Gold as Accepted Spot Commodity

Abu Dhabi Global Market designated Tether Gold (XAU₮) as an Accepted Spot Commodity on July 20, 2026. The recognition lets firms licensed in ADGM’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority offer trading, custody and settlement services for the gold-backed token if they hold the relevant permissions to work with Accepted Spot Commodities.

XAU₮ is issued on Ethereum and Tron and is backed one-to-one by physical gold. Each token represents one fine troy ounce from a London Good Delivery bar stored in secure vaults, primarily in Switzerland. The token gives holders an on-chain claim to the physical metal without requiring physical delivery, enabling near-instant transfers and cross-border settlement within supported infrastructure.

Under ADGM’s framework, regulated firms do not need to seek a separate commodity classification for each intended use of XAU₮, provided the firms already have permission to use Accepted Spot Commodities. The formal recognition covers a range of institutional services conducted inside ADGM’s legal framework, including trading, custody, structured products, collateralized lending and settlement.

Tether has expanded activity in the UAE in 2026 alongside the regulatory recognition. The company invested $20 million in Mercado Bitcoin’s financing round on July 7, led a $7 million Series A in Pact Labs on July 14, and completed an enterprise treasury pilot with Hyundai using USDT in early July. Market participants are moving to integrate XAU₮: in June 2026 the lending platform Ledn announced plans to accept XAU₮ as secondary collateral for institutional lending products.

ADGM previously designated Tether’s USDT as an Accepted Fiat‑Referenced Token in December 2025 across nine blockchain networks. The regulator’s approach names specific regulatory classifications and verifies individual tokens against those classifications; XAU₮ is the first physical commodity‑backed digital token to receive recognition under that model at this regulatory level.

Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s chief executive, welcomed the ADGM decision and described it as evidence of the UAE’s leadership in digital asset regulation, saying it creates room for regulated firms to work with a token backed by physical gold. Arvind Ramamurthy, ADGM’s Chief Market Development Officer, noted the recognition broadens the range of products and services available to firms operating from ADGM and supports the scaling of business activity within Abu Dhabi’s financial ecosystem.

Data tracked by market analysts show the on‑chain market for tokenized real‑world assets expanded to about $31 billion in 2026, up from roughly $6.6 billion a year earlier. ADGM presented the XAU₮ designation as a regulatory infrastructure decision that places an existing Tether token into a formal classification within the international financial centre, offering a clearer compliance pathway for Abu Dhabi‑based regulated firms wishing to offer tokenized gold services.