Why are large holders willing to hold XAUT instead of buying physical gold to keep at home?

This is a problem that many people have not figured out.

Physical gold has several pain points: storage costs, delivery costs, and poor liquidity. If you want to sell a kilogram of gold bars, it's not as simple as making a phone call to complete the transaction at market price immediately.

However, XAUT is on-chain, transferable and can be divided (minimum unit 0.01) 24 hours a day, and can be used as collateral. For those with funds in the million-dollar range, the liquidity premium offered by XAUT is something that physical gold cannot provide.

A friend of mine who works in OTC once said something that I think is very relevant:

"XAUT is not meant to replace gold, but to allow gold to flow on-chain like USDT."

Do not use the logic of 'buying gold' to understand XAUT; instead, use the logic of 'adding a layer of liquidity to gold' to understand it. The properties of the tool are greater than the properties of the asset.