| Katusa's Investment Insights | | The World's Newest Gold Buyer Made $13 Billion Last Year By Marin Katusa | | On July 8, 2014, three friends announced something called Realcoin from a Santa Monica startup office.
Four months later, Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins, and Craig Sellars rebranded it as Tether.
The pitch was simple: one digital token equals one US dollar, backed by actual dollars in a bank account.
Nobody thought it would work. Especially not the banks, who kept closing Tether's accounts.
Now it's 2025. Stablecoins - all of them combined – processed more annually than Visa. In 2024, stablecoins moved $27.6 trillion which is more than Visa and Mastercard combined: - Visa moved $15.7 trillion.
- Mastercard: $9.8 trillion.
Tether alone is closing in on $1.5 trillion in monthly transaction volume. And moving money faster than SWIFT, cheaper than Visa, and without questions from a bank teller asking mundane questions, holding up the line and making the wire process incredibly frustrating and time consuming.
How Stablecoins Actually Work (Because Nobody Explains This)
You wire $100 to a stablecoin issuer's bank account.
They mint 100 tokens to your wallet.
Those tokens trade freely until someone redeems them, then they wire back your $100 and burn the tokens. The reserves sit in Treasuries earning interest while the tokens move globally for pennies.
Tether claims this is how USDT works. Circle's USDC proves it with monthly audits. - The difference matters to investors and depositors because Tether made $13 billion in 2024 largely from Treasury interest on $113 billion in reserves.
But, Tether still won't do a real audit. That’s another deep dive story, but the market doesn’t care. USDT dominates with $183 billion in circulation.
Stablecoins are digital tokens that can also get backed by real-world stuff like Dollars, treasuries, sometimes even gold.
You can send one across the world in seconds. You don’t need a bank. You don’t need business hours. You don’t need to wait in line at the bank and answer the tellers’ questions regarding the nature of your business. It’s programmable money that works like email.
The rails are here and the world is starting to use the new tracks.
Russia Just Did Something Nobody Expected
After banning crypto in 2020, Russia legalized international stablecoin payments through licensed platforms in 2024.
Not because they love innovation. Because they need trade rails that bypass SWIFT and the dollar system.
Canada: Which usually trails regulatory trends by a polite 18 months, is finally waking up too. In October, they proposed their first national stablecoin framework that would be included in their upcoming budget… aiming to build rules without smothering the rails.
Japan: Already launched its stablecoin regime.
The U.S.? It passed the GENIUS Act in July, forcing reserve audits, legal oversight, and real-world backing. The message that this isn’t fringe finance anymore, we’re getting into regulated infrastructure.
Called the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins), it mandates 1:1 backing with dollars or Treasuries, monthly audits, and gives banks the green light to issue their own stablecoins.
These aren't experiments any longer.
Visa Stopped Testing and Started Processing
Payment giant Visa didn't stop at just one test transaction.
They turned it into a full-scale operation and made a massive announcement a few days ago.
They've expanded their support to include four stablecoins - PYUSD, USDG, EURC, and USDC - across four blockchains, enabling users to exchange them for 25 national currencies. - When a 66-year-old payment monopoly rebuilds its infrastructure for your technology, the experiment is over.
| |  | | Image Above: Visa Onchain Analytics Dashboard | | With over 130 stablecoin-linked card programs in more than 40 countries, they've seen a 400% increase in volume year-on-year, reaching a $2.5 billion run rate.
And they’re not alone.
Securitize - the biggest name in tokenizing real assets, is going public via a $1.25B deal with Cantor Fitzgerald’s SPAC.
Even Citi, JPMorgan, and BlackRock are experimenting with tokenized deposits and on-chain funds.
2025 is the Year Stablecoins Went Mainstream
This is the dawn of something big, and the eyeballs are trending up in the media. | | Press coverage skyrocketed with the market cap increase. That’s where we are now.
Stablecoin Adoption is Accelerating
Let’s look at what’s happening on-chain.
In 2023, stablecoins processed around $280 billion in monthly volume.
This year, that’s ballooned to $1.28 trillion, or the market cap of three and a half Visas. And it’s still growing faster. | | DEX trades, business payments, and cross-border settlements are all piling in. This is becoming a type of financial internet, instead of just a niche playground for traders.
And now it’s growing a gold layer.
GOLD Stablecoins: No Central Bank Needed
If stablecoins are version 2.0 of money, gold-backed stablecoins are version 3.0.
Instead of being tied to fiat (and all the trust issues that come with it), they’re pegged to real metal with some perks. It’s vaulted, verified and moveable 24/7.
Tether Gold (XAUT) and PAX Gold (PAXG) dominate the space.
Each PAX Gold token represents one troy ounce of London Good Delivery gold sitting in Brink's vaults. Serial numbers included.
You can take delivery in Singapore, London, or New York - or trade it at 3 AM like any other token.
Between PAX and Tether, they’ve pulled in billions of dollars by issuing gold-backed stablecoins.
Together with a few other players like Kinesis and Comtech Gold, they’ve built a $2.9B market from almost nothing.
That size and growth matters for an important reason, because all of a sudden it’s growing faster than even traditional gold ETFs. - Since September 2022, tokenized gold AUM has surged 206%, outpacing the 147% gain in traditional gold ETFs.
| | With all this newfound riches, revenue and profit… stablecoins have their sights set on resources and commodities.
The Acquisition Spree Begins
Tether, the same company behind USDT and XAUT, now owns 8% of Gold Royalty Corp (GROY).
This is a company one we’ve featured before as a Katusa Special Situations Alert and up ~280% since Feb 2024.
Paolo Ardoino, Tether's CEO since October 2023, is using their profits - estimated at $13 billion in 2024 alone - to buy into physical commodity streams.
And even foreshadowed his intentions to the Katusa Research audience on “X” weeks ago… | | Stablecoins aren’t just digital money anymore.
They’re touching real assets, physical supply chains, and now even the mining industry itself.
Stablecoins Crossed a Line of NO RETURN in 2024
They stopped being a crypto trading tool and became global payment infrastructure.
For fifty years, we trusted fiat. Then came the debt, inflation, and dysfunction. So capital started looking for something better.
Now Visa, Mastercard, JPMorgan, and Bank of America are building on the same transparent rails.
The GENIUS Act gives them regulatory cover.
Foreign countries are creating their own frameworks to avoid dollar dependence.
The old system had one advantage: opacity. When Lehman Brothers was collapsing in 2008, nobody could watch their reserves drain in real-time on a public blockchain.
With stablecoins, every redemption is visible. Every bank run is broadcast.
In the November issue of Katusa’s Resource Opportunities, we dive deep into the digital currency wave, - How it’s reshaping global finance,
- Rewriting payment rails, and
- Kicking up serious dust in the gold mining industry.
For now, just know this… with billions of dollars moving on-chain, the future of money is already here.
You're not betting on cryptocurrency anymore.
You're betting on which company becomes the new digital Federal Reserve.
Regards,
Marin Katusa | | | |
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