Tether lifts Metalla Royalty & Streaming stake: portfolio notes for mine planners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Tether International has lifted its stake in Metalla Royalty & Streaming to about 14%, buying 149,116 shares at US$9.14 each for US$1.36 million and taking its holding to 13.2 million shares out of 93.5 million outstanding. Metalla’s nearly 100 royalties and streams include a 1.5% royalty over part of Iamgold’s Côté gold mine and the Gosselin deposit in Ontario, plus exposure to First Quantum’s Taca Taca and Hudbay’s Copper World projects. The move extends Tether’s 2025–26 strategy of shifting crypto-derived capital into gold-linked royalties, alongside its 32% stake in Elemental Altus and more than 146 tonnes of physical gold.
Technical Brief
- Early-warning disclosure was triggered once Tether’s post-June purchases exceeded 2% of Metalla’s outstanding shares.
- Metalla’s 1.5% royalty covers part of Iamgold’s Côté mine plus the entire Gosselin deposit footprint.
- Côté–Gosselin royalty ground lies ~175 km northwest of Sudbury and ~500 km north of Toronto, constraining logistics.
- Portfolio exposure includes First Quantum’s Taca Taca copper project in Argentina and Hudbay’s Copper World in Arizona.
- Metalla also holds royalty exposure over G Mining Ventures’ Tocantinzinho gold mine in Brazil, diversifying jurisdictional risk.
- Tether’s Q2 balance sheet shows US$187.75 billion in assets against US$183.64 billion liabilities, leaving a US$4.11 billion buffer.
- Physical gold holdings at Tether exceeded 146 tonnes after adding 14 tonnes in Q2, plus 22 tonnes backing XAU₮ tokens.
- Tether’s filing explicitly leaves open options to increase or reduce its Metalla position or engage on capital structure.
- For royalty investors, the case illustrates using mine-revenue exposure to decouple from construction and operating risk.
Our Take
Tether’s move to a 14% stake in Metalla Royalty & Streaming aligns with its broader pivot into physical gold and gold-linked assets, as highlighted in our coverage of its roughly 140-tonne bullion accumulation in Swiss vaults; this suggests Metalla’s 100-asset royalty portfolio is being treated as an additional, yield-bearing gold proxy alongside Tether Gold’s XAU₮ tokens.
Because Metalla’s royalties span gold, silver and copper projects such as Iamgold’s Côté mine and Codelco’s El Teniente, Tether is indirectly adding long-dated exposure to base metals and large-scale copper growth projects, which diversifies away from the purely bullion-backed structure of XAU₮ noted in recent gold reserve and ETF flow pieces in our database.
Within our 1286 Mining stories, Tether is unusual as a crypto-stablecoin issuer building sizeable positions in listed royalty companies like Metalla and Elemental Altus Royalties, signalling that non-traditional financial players are starting to use royalty/streaming vehicles as balance-sheet tools for commodity reserve and duration management rather than just speculative equity bets.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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