Buying gold anyway? Hold it as XAUT and earn up to 20% APY

Who this is for

Hold-to-Earn is for people who were already going to own gold. If you are about to add gold to a portfolio — as a hedge, as savings outside the banking system, or as a slice next to your crypto — the decision you still have to make is the form: a bar in a drawer, a fund in a brokerage account, or a token in a wallet. Each holds the same gold price. Only one of them pays you to hold it right now.

That is the whole case. The reward does not change what gold is, and it is not a reason to buy gold you did not want. But for a position you were going to build anyway, holding it as XAUT for these weeks adds up to 20% a year on top of whatever gold itself does, with no lockup and nothing to manage after the purchase. If you are still deciding between the forms, the trade-offs beyond this reward are in physical gold vs gold ETF vs tokenized gold; if you buy gold by the gram in an app, see digital gold vs tokenized gold.

How much you would earn

Enter the gold you plan to hold and the day you would start; the calculator applies TopNod's rule, the $10,000 cap, the $20 minimum and the 24-hour start. Add your own gas and spread to see what is left after costs.

How Hold-to-Earn works

Buy XAUT, keep it in your TopNod wallet, and each day earns a slice of the annual rate on that day's lowest balance. The rules, as TopNod states them:

• What to hold: at least $20 of XAUT on Ethereum, in a TopNod wallet.
• When it starts: 24 hours after you hold the position.
• Daily reward = the day's lowest holding in USD × APY ÷ 365. Selling or sending XAUT during a day lowers that day's figure.
• Cap: up to $10,000 per address counts; anything above it is counted as $10,000.
• Rate: up to 20% APY, paid in USDT once the round ends.
• Round 1: October 6, 2026 10:00 UTC to November 16, 2026 16:00 UTC, from a 50,000 USDT pool.

A worked example: you buy $1,000 of XAUT when the round opens. From the next day it earns about $0.55 a day. If you later send $300 elsewhere, that day and every day after it are counted on $700. The balance is valued in dollars, so it moves with gold: if gold rises 3%, the same XAUT counts as about $1,030.

Bars vs ETF vs XAUT, over the same weeks

For the same dollars of gold over round 1, a bar earns nothing, an ETF costs its fee, and XAUT in a TopNod wallet earns up to 2.21%. Gold's own price change is identical in all three, so it is left out.

Buying costs differ too. Small bars and coins are sold at a dealer premium over spot, typically 3–8%; an ETF has a brokerage commission and a small spread; XAUT has Ethereum gas and the token's spread to spot, which was -0.04% on 2026-10-02 (live on the tokenized metal premium tracker). To compare those costs over a longer holding period, use the gold holding cost calculator. Gold was about $4,142/oz when this page was built.

Gas, spread and the break-even

You pay the Ethereum gas to buy XAUT, so the reward is worth it from a few hundred dollars up, not at the $20 minimum. At $20 the round pays about $0.44, usually less than one Ethereum transaction. The holding at which the full-round reward covers your costs:

Past that point, the reward is extra return on gold you were holding anyway. Since you would pay some cost to buy gold in any form, the fairer comparison is against the bar's dealer premium or the ETF's commission, not against zero.

Why joining early matters

Rewards come from a 50,000 USDT pool paid out first come, first served. At the full 20% for the whole round, that covers about $2,267,081 of counted holdings. If more joins than that, the pool can run out before November 16, 2026 — which is what "up to" means here, and why the start of the round is the best time to be holding.

Is this XAUT staking?

No — it is simply holding, which is why some people call it soft staking. XAUT has no native staking: it is a claim on vaulted gold, not a token that secures a blockchain, and its issuer pays holders nothing. So any "XAUT staking" offer is someone paying you to hold it or to lend it out. Lending moves your XAUT into a protocol or an exchange; Hold-to-Earn leaves it in your own wallet, with nothing locked and nothing to unstake when you want to sell. For how this compares with leasing gold, bank gold deposits and covered-call funds, see does gold pay interest?

What to weigh

• Gold's price moves the position far more than the reward does over 40 days — in either direction.
• The reward is a ceiling from a finite pool, paid by TopNod after the round ends.
• XAUT is a claim on gold held by its issuer, TG Commodities, rather than metal in your hands; see PAXG vs XAUT and tokenized gold risks.
• Self-custody: TopNod has no seed phrase; your password restores access if you lose the device, so keep it safe.

New to holding gold on-chain? How to hold gold on-chain covers the basics end to end.

Disclosure: StackFi's founder leads growth at TopNod. We earn no referral fees. Details

FAQ

Campaign terms verified 2026-10-01 from TopNod. TopNod intends to renew the campaign after this round; next-round terms are not known yet.