On June 18, 2026, two coordinates were simultaneously lit up: on the screen of the Seoul Stock Exchange, the KOSPI index reached 9,000 points for the first time during trading, with a daily increase of over 1%, pushing its cumulative gain of over 110% since the beginning of the year even further; meanwhile, in the on-chain world, Tether announced the phased cessation of support for the Alloy by Tether platform and its gold-backed derivative token aUSDT. This token, with a market value of only about 1.2 million, operates based on over-collateralization backed by gold, and has been placed into a three-month exit channel, where holders can return aUSDT within the window period to receive the corresponding amount of XAUT. One is the Korean stock market at historic highs with soaring sentiment, while the other is the on-chain gold product quietly withdrawing and actively contracting. The risk appetite seems to be pulled apart at two extremes: as the Korean stocks continue to narrate a high-beta growth story, while the gold standard narrative is shrinking into a small corner asset on-chain, investors must decide which end of the risk and hedging axis to push their chips toward.
KOSPI Surges to 9000 Points: The Korean Stock Market Bullish Scene
If on-chain gold is being gradually withdrawn, the offline Korean stock market is telling another risk story with an almost straight upward curve. Since 2025, the KOSPI has left little room for bears to exit gracefully, rising steadily to evolve into a standard bull market by 2026. According to AiCoin data, when the KOSPI first hit the 9,000-point mark on June 18 during trading, its cumulative gain for the year had exceeded 110%, and the intra-day increase was also over 1%. This number means that many positions that were seen as “reducing positions on the rise” last year have now all turned into starting points that short-sellers are looking back at repeatedly.
The rise of this curve is driven not only by the overall demand for global risk assets remaining high but also by the market's willingness to interpret the strength of the KOSPI as a result of local economic recovery, rising corporate profits, and the ongoing strength of the technology sector—recovering orders from export companies and the revaluation of hard technology companies have made Korea a high-beta asset that must be taken seriously again on the global stock market map. For local investors, the index crossing 9,000 points represents a collective emotional celebration: fund net values reach new highs, and retail investors shift their discussions from “can we still buy on a pullback” to “could this time really be different?” For global capital, KOSPI's historic high seems more like a signal light—under an environment where risk assets are still in vogue, some funds are willing to pay over a doubling annual return for a large-cap index from an emerging market, indicating that risk appetite has not abated but is in fact searching for markets that can still tell a growth story.
aUSDT Terminated: Tether Bets on XAUT
As Korean investors cheer for the new high of KOSPI in front of screens, on the other side, Tether has chosen to press the stop button on a product line that has not been successful. Launched about two years ago, aUSDT was designed as an over-collateralized derivative token based on a "gold standard": users on the Alloy by Tether platform use XAUT and other gold-backed tokens as collateral to mint aUSDT via an over-collateralization structure, supporting a derivative token aimed at a wider range of scenarios with on-chain gold-like assets. However, two years later, according to public information, aUSDT's overall market value remains only around 1.2 million and has never grown into a meaningful asset pool; within Tether's increasingly complex product matrix, it resembles a sidelined project quietly put on hold.
This time, Tether did not give it more time. In the announcement, Tether explicitly stated that it would gradually cease support for the Alloy by Tether platform, along with the cessation of the issuance and circulation of aUSDT operating around this platform. From the date of the announcement, existing holders are provided with a three-month transition window during which they can return aUSDT on-chain to withdraw the corresponding amount of XAUT; the collateral positions on the Alloy contract will also gradually be redeemed and dismantled in this process. Rather than continue to waste resources on a derivative token worth only over one hundred thousand, Tether reiterated in its statement that it would concentrate its efforts on products with clearer user needs and more mature markets—most notably, continuing to use gold-backed tokens like XAUT as key players in the gold standard track.
Gold Tokens Cooling: Who Took Away the Income Narrative?
On the same day, Korean investors saw two completely different worlds on their screens: the KOSPI crossed 9,000 points with a year-to-date increase exceeding 110%, with an entire narrative revolving around “economic recovery,” “improved corporate profits,” and “the continuous bull run of technology stocks,” where high returns and high beta stories became the main theme. In such an atmosphere, holding a basket of stock indices is imagined as a tool for participating in growth and sharing dividends, even if volatility is greater, market sentiment clearly leans towards “taking on a bit more risk.”
Pushed into the corner are the on-chain products anchored to gold. aUSDT operated for about two years with a market value still around 1.2 million; regardless of the valuation unit, this size is far from mainstream dollar-pegged tokens or major crypto assets. It relies on over-collateralization with gold-backed assets like XAUT and is aimed at users preferring hedging and wealth preservation, but this design raises the barrier to product understanding and increases user education costs, while market interest in “on-chain gold notes” is evidently limited. More critically, current public information does not provide any quantitative data regarding the capital movement between the Korean stock market and the crypto market, nor do we see details on the redemption scale of aUSDT or participating addresses. We cannot prove that funds have moved from gold tokens to the KOSPI; we can only observe from the narrative and preference level: when traditional stock markets provide double-level returns, the on-chain perception space of gold-backed tokens naturally appears quite cold.
Redemption Channel Opens: How On-Chain Gold Migrates
During the three-month redemption window, the operational path for aUSDT holders is actually quite straightforward: users return their aUSDT to the relevant Alloy by Tether contract within their wallets, and the contract will “release” the corresponding shares from the previously locked gold-backed token XAUT collateral pool according to established rules, transferring the XAUT back to the user's address while destroying the returned aUSDT on-chain. For the protocol, this means that the accounting units originally recorded in the aUSDT contract, as well as related collateral positions, will gradually disappear from Alloy platform's balance sheet and flow back under the XAUT contract and the new holding addresses, while Alloy’s overall position will be passively liquidated to zero as redemption progresses.
In the absence of quantitative on-chain indicators, the observable and interpretable signals are mostly directionally indicative: first, the pace of destruction of aUSDT supply, and the gradual quieting of Alloy contract calls; second, whether the holding structure becomes more dispersed or concentrated after XAUT flows from contract addresses to personal or institutional addresses; third, after Tether shifts its resource focus back to XAUT, whether this redistributed on-chain gold is held statically or is further used for collateral or trading in other protocols. Current public materials do not provide statistics on the number of redemptions, participating address counts, or the distribution of new XAUT holders; without this information gap, what can be done is to continuously track the on-chain trajectories of aUSDT destruction and XAUT distribution rather than make any quantitative judgments on redemption scale or price impact.
Korean Stocks Soar and On-Chain Gold: Where to Look Next
On June 18, 2026, on one side was the KOSPI crossing 9,000 points for the first time during trading, with a year-to-date increase exceeding 110%, continuing the bull market narrative from 2025 and shaping the Korean stock market as an export of “high-risk, high-reward” expectations; on the other side, Tether announced a phased cessation of the Alloy platform and the aUSDT with a market value of about 1.2 million after nearly two years of experimentation, pulling resources back to more mature gold-backed product XAUT, which amounts to a proactive tightening of a small-scale experiment on “on-chain gold standard.” This release and tightening reflect the differentiation of global market narratives: traditional stock markets are discussing growth and revaluation, while on-chain is narrowing its experiments, focusing on the stock of gold assets themselves. The variables to look for going forward are clear: whether KOSPI can maintain its trend at high levels or experience more intense volatility, whether it continues to attract local retail and institutional investors, spreading risk appetite into the local crypto market; what new tokens or redesigned products Tether will launch around XAUT, and the constraints and guidance of the related regulatory environment on the gold on-chain form. It is important to emphasize that there is currently no public quantitative data proving direct, measurable capital movement between the Korean stock market and crypto assets, and there is a lack of details on the number of aUSDT redemptions and on-chain participating addresses, thus these two events occurring on the same day are more suitable as reference signals on emotional and strategic levels for observing how risk appetite and asset narratives evolve independently, rather than being interpreted as an existing cross-market causal chain.
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