Tether, the company behind the world’s largest stablecoin, has been buying physical gold at a pace of up to two tons a week as it builds one of the world’s largest bullion stockpiles.

The company’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, told Bloomberg that Tether intends to continue purchasing gold at that rate for at least the next few months. At current prices, that equates to more than $1 billion in buys every month.

The purchases are delivered to a high-security former nuclear bunker in Switzerland, which Ardoino described as “a James Bond kind of place.”

Tether’s gold holdings now total around 140 tons, worth an estimated $24 billion, making it one of the largest known holders of gold outside of governments, central banks and major ETFs. Most of that gold represents the company’s own reserves, while some backs its gold-backed stablecoin, XAUT$5,269.82, which currently has a $2.7 billion market capitalization according to CoinGecko.

The company’s gold-buying pace has exceeded that of countries such as Greece, Qatar, and Australia, the firm said. In the last quarter of 2025, it added 27 metric tons of gold to its fund exposure.

“Through Tether Gold, we are operating at a scale that now places the Tether Gold Investment Fund alongside sovereign gold holders, and that carries real responsibility,” Ardoino said in a press release. “XAU₮ exists to remove ambiguity at a time when confidence in monetary systems is weakening.”

That ambiguity, according to Björn Schmidtke, CEO of the Tether gold-treasury firm Aurelion (AURE), is partly linked to investments in gold exchange-traded funds and stocks. To Schmidtke, these represent “paper gold,” as investors do not know which piece of physical gold they own through it.

Roughly 98% of gold investments are made through ETFs or other financial instruments that don’t guarantee specific bar ownership, Schmidtke estimated in an interview with CoinDesk.

In a market crisis, he warned that this "paper gold" structure could crack under pressure if mass redemptions are triggered. Tokenized gold, Schmidtke said, helps eliminate the bottleneck in gold delivery and provides proof of ownership.

Still, gold’s performance has many speculating that buyers are helping push its price higher. The precious metal is up more than 90% over the last 12 months and now trades at $5,260 per ounce.

While Jeffries estimates that Tether’s buying helped drive gold prices higher, so did central bank buying. Poland, Kazakhstan, Brazil and Azerbaijan were among the top buyers of the precious metal last year, according to the World Gold Council.

Part of that gold buying could be ahead of the potential launch from foreign countries of a tokenized version of gold meant to compete with the U.S. dollar, Ardoino argued.

Indeed, various members of BRICS, an intergovernmental organization, have been among the top net buyers of gold. One exception is Russia, which has been a net seller, though it’s involved in an ongoing armed conflict that’s likely draining its reserves.