Precious metals royalties firm Elemental Royalty has announced that investors will be able to receive dividend payments in Tether's XAUT — a tokenized gold product — marking what appears to be the first time a publicly listed royalties company has offered blockchain-based precious metals as a dividend option.
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The move establishes a novel use case for tokenized gold, bridging the gap between traditional mining-sector finance and digital asset infrastructure. Each XAUT token is backed by one troy ounce of physical gold held in secure vaults, making it a blockchain-native representation of the underlying commodity.
How the Dividend Structure Works
Under the new arrangement, Elemental Royalty shareholders will have the option to receive their dividends denominated in XAUT rather than traditional fiat currency.
The company, which earns revenue through royalty agreements with precious metals mining operations, is positioning the offering as a way to give investors more direct exposure to gold — without the friction of purchasing and storing physical bullion.
Tether's XAUT token operates on the Ethereum blockchain and is part of the stablecoin issuer's broader push into real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. Tether has stated that each token is redeemable for physical gold, with holdings audited and stored in Swiss vaults.
As of mid-2025, the tokenized gold market has grown into a multi-billion-dollar sector, with XAUT and Paxos's PAXG among the leading products.
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A Growing Trend in RWA Tokenization
Elemental Royalty's decision reflects a broader trend of traditional finance companies experimenting with tokenized real-world assets. Gold-backed tokens have gained traction particularly during periods of macroeconomic uncertainty, offering holders the price exposure of gold with the portability and programmability of blockchain-based assets.
The royalties model itself is well-suited to this kind of integration. Royalty companies receive a percentage of revenue from mining operations without bearing the operational costs of extraction, generating relatively predictable cash flows that can then be distributed to shareholders.
Denominating those distributions in tokenized gold keeps the entire value chain — from mine to investor — tied to the underlying commodity.
The offering represents one of the first instances of a publicly listed company using tokenized precious metals for shareholder distributions, according to Decrypt's reporting.
What to Watch
The key question going forward is whether other resource-sector companies follow Elemental Royalty's lead. If the model proves operationally viable and attracts investor interest, it could open the door for tokenized commodity dividends across the mining industry.
Regulatory treatment of such distributions — particularly across different jurisdictions — will also be a factor to monitor as the practice scales.
For Tether, the partnership adds another institutional use case for XAUT beyond trading and speculation, reinforcing the company's strategy of expanding its product suite beyond the dominant USDT stablecoin and into tokenized commodities and other real-world assets.
