Ethereum whales enter XAUT accumulation mode

XAUT is gaining popularity among holders as whales continue to expand their reserves. As spot gold still trades above $5,179, buyers are accumulating the token as a hedge against crypto uncertainty.

Tether’s XAUT is gaining popularity as a reserve token among Ethereum wallet holders. In total, 35,609 wallets held XAUT as of March 11, up from 33,390 wallets on March 1.

XAUT has minted new tokens in early 2026, with a total supply of 712,247 and a near-record market capitalization of over $3.57B.

In the past months, XAUT has expanded exponentially, mostly driven by becoming the most convenient on-chain exposure to physical gold. Peak global uncertainty also contributed to the accumulation of gold by both whales and retail investors.

Why are whales buying XAUT?

XAUT is offering a spot market for an asset hovering near all-time highs. In the past year, gold showed it was preferred to $BTC at offsetting inflation and offered an upside as global uncertainty grew.

Gold was up by over 78% in the past year, while $BTC erased a net 16.78% of its price. The more volatile $BTC became, the more traders sought a hedge against uncertainty.

XAUT has also turned profitable for Tether, with $2.31M in net earnings for the last quarter of 2025. The token is also gaining use cases within DeFi protocols as valuable collateral.

XAUT also has double the trading volumes compared to its main competitor Paxos Gold (PAXG). XAUT relies on Bitget for most of its trading, while some whales specifically use Bitfinex.

Big wallets accumulate more XAUT

So far, the top wallets holding XAUT have mostly accumulated more tokens. The second-biggest whale holds 8.02% of the total supply, after buying up XAUT in the past week. The wallet has been linked to addresses belonging to Abraxas Capital, which has mostly sent the XAUT to their final destination wallet.

The second-biggest XAUT whale nearly doubled their holdings since the beginning of March. | Source: Arkham Intelligence

Abraxas Capital holds around 2.7K XAUT tokens, valued at $265M. Abraxas had limited outflows of gold tokens.

Another known holder, Antalpha, sold some of their holdings after weeks of accumulation. However, the sale looks like short-term profit-taking, as Antalpha has retained most of its reserves. The biggest XAUT outflow comes from RhinoFi, a relatively inactive DeFi protocol.

Currently, only one company uses XAUT for its treasury, the US-based Aurelion. Tether is also one of the biggest holders, while also controlling the physical gold vault.

The shift to gold-backed tokens showed crypto infrastructure was still widely used, as long as it carried value and liquidity. XAUT can be easily traded, despite the lack of a Binance listing, and adoption may continue in the coming months.

The supply of XAUT also grows the overall value of tokenized assets. So far, the gold-backed token remains the most widely adopted RWA, spreading around the crypto ecosystem.