Bybit Launches Tether Gold Options With Institutional Liquidity

Bybit has launched options trading on Tether Gold (XAUT), making it the first major crypto exchange to offer the product with institutional-grade liquidity behind it. The contracts went live on Monday and give traders a new way to hedge gold exposure, speculate on price movements, and build custom volatility strategies using on-chain infrastructure.

XAUT is a token backed one-to-one by physical gold held in Swiss vaults, with each unit representing one troy ounce of bullion. The options are European-style contracts settled in USDT, accessible through Bybit's Request for Quote system for over-the-counter deals. Each contract corresponds to a single XAUT token, keeping the structure straightforward for traders already familiar with traditional gold derivatives.

A first for crypto: options on a tokenized real-world asset.

Introducing XAUT options, backed by physical gold.

With @Orbit_Markets, we're adding RFQ for customized OTC options trading.
→ Manage risk
→ Express market views
→ Trade gold volatility
→ Custom OTC structures via… pic.twitter.com/YfWvY99oBl

— Bybit Institutional (@Bybit_Ins) June 12, 2026

Orbit Markets Brings Deutsche Bank Precious Metals Pedigree to Bybit

To ensure the market doesn't open thin, Bybit has partnered with Orbit Markets, a crypto options market maker whose team includes the former Asia-Pacific head of currencies and precious metals at Deutsche Bank. That kind of background matters in a launch like this, where the gap between headline availability and real usable liquidity can be wide.

The partnership reflects a broader pattern in crypto derivatives, where exchanges increasingly lean on specialist market makers to bridge the credibility gap with institutional clients who demand tight spreads and reliable execution before committing capital to a new product.

Tether Gold Has Grown to a $2.6 Billion Market Cap This Year

The timing of Bybit's launch comes as interest in tokenized gold has accelerated. Tether Gold's market cap has grown to around $2.6 billion, with the token's underlying gold reserves rising 36% in the first quarter of 2026 alone, reaching roughly 707,000 ounces stored in Swiss vaults. XAUT has also contributed around 89% of the growth in tokenized commodities year to date, according to industry data, and now accounts for more than half of the entire tokenized gold market. For more context on how tokenized assets are developing, see our DTCC tokenisation explainer.

A Multi-Billion Dollar Market That Has Never Had a Home on a Major Crypto Exchange

Gold options are already a deep and liquid market in traditional finance. CME Group's gold options averaged around 93,000 contracts a day in the year to date through early 2026, a record pace driven by elevated prices and institutional hedging demand. That volume exists almost entirely on regulated futures exchanges and in OTC markets between banks and asset managers, with no meaningful on-chain equivalent until now.

XAUT options had been available on smaller platforms such as CoinCall since late 2024, but without the liquidity depth or exchange profile to attract serious hedgers. Bybit's entry changes that, bringing a top-five exchange by volume and a dedicated institutional market maker to a product that has until now been limited to niche venues. The launch is another step in the narrowing gap between tokenized commodities and the traditional derivatives infrastructure that institutional traders are used to working with.