On January 23, Bitfinex launched trading of a digital asset backed by physical gold known as Tether Gold (XAU₮). However, on January 30, the exchange started allowing trading of XAUT/BTC, XAUT/USD, and XAUT/USDT.

According to the exchange, margin trading (allows borrowing of funds for more leverage) on its platform will need an initial equity rate of 20 percent and offer up to 5x leverage.

Sometime ago, leading crypto company Tether launched some stablecoins and XAUT is one of them, as well as the controversial USDT. USDT is perceived as the number one stablecoin worldwide and has been controversial.

According to some reports, Tether lacks sufficient dollars for the backing of the token. Tether has been striving to make people realize that there is sufficient amount of dollar holdings to back USDT.

Besides, based on claims, XAUT is the best way to hold gold because its physical gold storage backing is supposedly stored in a Swiss vault, and it adopts the best security and anti-threat methods.

Apart from the controversy surrounding USDT, there are accusations of crypto market manipulation against both Tether and Bitfinex. As alleged by some ongoing lawsuits, both firms were responsible for the bull run of Bitcoin in 2017 that resulted in the all-time high price of $20,000.

Due to various lawsuits against the two firms over the allegations, on January 24, a court in New York ordered the merger of four lawsuits against them. A recent report said the merger has raised concerns about the plaintiff’s leadership.

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