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Tether's gold reserves exceed 7.7 tons, and the U.S. Congress restarts the Crypto Assets bill ｜ Gate Research Institute
Alpha Interpretation
The U.S. Congress has restarted the legislative process, aiming to complete the cryptocurrency bill before August.
Overview After reconvening in the spring, the U.S. Congress will prioritize cryptocurrency legislation, aiming to complete the legislative work on stablecoin and market structure bills before August. The House of Representatives and the Senate are each advancing new proposal texts while coordinating the existing stablecoin legislative process.
Details Overview After a two-week Easter holiday, U.S. lawmakers have returned to Capitol Hill, making digital asset legislation a current focus. The House Financial Services Committee has scheduled a joint hearing with the Agriculture Committee on May 6, titled "The Future of American Innovation and Digital Assets: A Blueprint for the 21st Century." According to House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, the FIT21 Market Structure Bill is being updated and is set to release a discussion draft soon, while the Senate is also advancing a new version that incorporates elements of the Lummis-Gillibrand Bill. Additionally, in the stablecoin sector, the Senate's GENIUS Act and the House's STABLE Act are seeking to merge in an effort to create a final version that can be approved by both chambers. French Hill emphasized that, despite differences, both sides are intent on continuing communication to reach an agreement.
Hotspot Interpretation For crypto investors, this legislative process may bring multiple opportunities: on the one hand, a clear compliance path will reduce the uncertainty of project operations and capital flows, help attract more traditional capital to enter, and accelerate the revaluation of high-quality assets; On the other hand, the dominance of US dollar stablecoins in global payments, DeFi and cross-border settlements is expected to be further strengthened, and related ecological projects and infrastructure providers may usher in growth dividends. If the legislation is successfully implemented, market sentiment is expected to be boosted, and investors can focus on compliance-friendly platforms, stablecoin ecosystems, and high-quality crypto asset layout opportunities that are closely related to the US market. 【1】
Tether announced the Q1 audit report for XAU₮, with gold reserves exceeding 7.7 tons.
Overview Tether released its first independent attestation report for Tether Gold (XAU₮) in the first quarter of 2025, showing that each XAU₮ token in circulation is backed by one ounce of physical gold, with total reserves exceeding 7.7 tons. As macroeconomic uncertainty rises, XAU₮ provides a reliable digital gold option for global users beyond stablecoins.
Details Overview As of April 28, 2025, Tether Gold (XAU₮) continues to hold its position as the world's most market-capped and compliant physical gold token. According to the Evidence Report, XAU₮ currently has 246,523.33 ounces of gold in circulation, stored in a world-class vault in Switzerland, with each token corresponding to one ounce of gold at a ratio of 1:1. In the first quarter, the XAU₮ market cap grew to ₮770 million, and the unit price hit an all-time high of ₮3,423 on April 21. Tether noted that XAU₮'s growth was driven by global economic turmoil, geopolitical tensions and the need to fight inflation, while emphasizing that the volume of physical gold inventories is more important than price volatility. Now that XAU₮ has received regulatory approval in El Salvador, Tether continues to work with law enforcement around the world to enhance transparency and compliance.
Hotspot Interpretation Tether Gold (XAU₮) is gradually establishing itself as a digital representative of gold assets against the backdrop of challenging global dollar dominance and accelerating the build-up of gold reserves by central banks. With real physical reserves, strong regulatory compliance, and convenient on-chain liquidity, XAU₮ not only continues gold's traditional role as a value safe-haven asset, but also provides new allocation options for digital asset investors. For crypto investors, XAU₮ brings two opportunities: first, by holding XAU₮, they can easily participate in global gold asset allocation on the chain and avoid macro uncertainty and inflation risks; The second is to serve as an alternative value anchor in addition to stablecoins, helping to optimize the anti-volatility and risk hedging ability of the portfolio. With the implementation of regulations in more countries and the deepening of traditional capital's awareness of digital gold, the potential demand for XAU₮ and its related ecosystems is expected to further expand, which deserves medium- and long-term attention. 【2】
Mastercard advances stablecoin integration to support global payments and settlements.
Overview Mastercard has announced the integration of stablecoins into the global payment system, allowing consumers to spend stablecoins from their crypto wallets, and merchants can accept and settle stablecoins, covering over 150 million merchants.
Detailed Overview According to Mastercard, in the future, consumers will be able to use stablecoins in crypto wallets to pay for goods or services directly with traditional bank cards, and at the same time, they can withdraw stablecoins to bank accounts through "Mastercard Move". Current cooperative stablecoins include USDC issued by Circle and stablecoins issued by Paxos. As the U.S. Congress advances stablecoin legislation, more and more financial institutions are accelerating the layout of stablecoin business. According to the data, the total supply of USD-pegged stablecoins has exceeded $230 billion so far, and the global stablecoin trading volume exceeded $5.1 trillion in the first half of 2024.
Hotspot Interpretation Mastercard integrates stablecoins into the global payment system, marking a shift from pilot phases to mainstream applications for stablecoin payments. As the legislative environment becomes clearer, stablecoins are expected to play a key role in cross-border payments, merchant settlements, and the circulation of the digital economy, becoming an important bridge between crypto assets and traditional finance. For crypto investors, this trend signifies that investment opportunities around stablecoin infrastructure, payment gateways, on-chain settlement technologies, and USD stablecoin ecosystems are rapidly increasing, especially against the backdrop of accelerating digitalization in global trade, with high-quality compliant projects likely to benefit from the continued influx of capital and users. 【3】
Has the investor taken action?
According to RootData, in the past 24 hours, 1 project has publicly announced that it has secured financing in the blockchain security sector, with the amount of financing not disclosed. Here are the specific details of the financing project: 【4】
Ika
Completed strategic financing, with the specific amount undisclosed, participated by Sui. Ika is an innovative company committed to blockchain security interoperability, focusing on developing the world's fastest parallel MPC (Multi-Party Computation) network. It breaks the performance bottleneck of traditional MPC technology through its original 2PC-MPC encryption scheme, achieving sub-second latency, extreme scalability, and zero-trust security assurance. Ika can support hundreds to thousands of signing nodes, enhancing decentralization while ensuring high processing capacity.
Funds Usage Ika's current round of financing will mainly be used for two directions: first, to continue deepening the research and development of its parallel MPC technology, especially in the areas of improving network throughput, reducing latency, and enhancing decentralized security. Ika plans to further optimize the 2PC-MPC encryption scheme, expand the scale of signing nodes, and ensure that while supporting large-scale cross-chain operations, it maintains sub-second processing speed and ironclad asset security; second, to accelerate ecosystem expansion and application landing, including promoting more DeFi, decentralized custody, chain abstraction, and AI agent protection project technology integration on the Sui blockchain.
Opportunity Interpretation With the expansion of multi-chain ecosystems and the growing demand for cross-chain assets, the parallel MPC technology focused on by Ika has significant application potential in enhancing blockchain interoperability and security. Its features of low latency, high scalability, and zero-trust architecture provide technical landing space in areas such as DeFi, cross-chain bridges, chain abstraction, and AI agent protection. In the future, if Ika's related technologies can achieve large-scale application in mainstream blockchain ecosystems, it is expected to promote further development of cross-chain asset management and on-chain security mechanisms.
Did you receive the airdrop?
Ika
Ika is the first sub-second level MPC network in the Sui ecosystem, capable of running at speeds exceeding 10,000 TPS, with zero-trust security features, focusing on multi-chain asset coordination and liquidity enhancement. Ika has received support from the Sui Foundation and has completed over $21 million in funding to date, currently launching an airdrop campaign through the GiveRep platform. Ika is conducting an airdrop program based on SUI holders, where participants can earn Ink Droplets (points) by staking SUI and completing tasks. The more points earned, the greater the Ika airdrop rewards that can be obtained in the future. 【6】
Participation Method
Tip Airdrop plans and participation methods may be updated at any time. Users are advised to follow Ika's official channels for the latest information. At the same time, users should participate with caution, be aware of risks, and conduct thorough research before participating. Gate.io does not guarantee the distribution of subsequent airdrop rewards.
Reference Materials:
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