As of: November 28, 2025 by Florian Grummes
Following the sharp decline at the end of October, precious metal prices recovered significantly during November. While gold is once again trading clearly above the important $4,000 mark at around $4,175, silver prices are approaching their new all-time high of $54.45 for the third time.
However, shortly before the end of the month, a failure of the cooling systems at the CyrusOne data center today led to a complete standstill of the financial infrastructure of the world’s largest derivatives exchange CME Group. This affected important trading platforms such as EBS for foreign exchange and BrokerTec for bonds. Consequently, prices for key commodity and financial products such as WTI oil, gold, silver, and futures on the S&P 500 and US Treasuries froze for several hours, leading to significant trading disruptions.
Cause of the CME Outage
The CME Group outage on November 28, 2025, was caused by a cooling problem at the CyrusOne data center in Aurora, Illinois (CHI1 facility). The servers overheated due to the cooling failure, leading to automatic shutdowns and halting all Globex trading (futures, options, foreign exchange, commodities, stock indices). This incident highlights the physical limitations of centralized financial infrastructure, which is reaching its thermodynamic load limit, especially given the increasing computing power and cooling requirements, primarily driven by growing AI usage.
The concentration of infrastructure in a few locations makes the system vulnerable to such outages. At the same time, the crisis offered insights into the higher resilience of decentralized systems, such as blockchain networks, which continued to operate despite the CME platform’s outage.
Once again, it becomes clear how important a fundamental restructuring of financial infrastructure towards geographical distribution, cloud migration, and the integration of decentralized technologies would be to minimize such systemic risks and ensure the robustness of financial markets.
Tether Holdings as a New Player and Price Driver in the Gold Market
While the CME Group outage shook the central electronic financial infrastructure, continued strong physical demand is pushing gold prices ever higher. In recent months, Tether Holding has increasingly come into focus as a new player and price driver in the gold market.
Tether Limited Holdings is a financial technology company that issues the Tether stablecoin (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization. Tether primarily invests its deposited reserves in interest-bearing assets, particularly US Treasury bonds. For years, the company has been one of the largest buyers of these US debt securities.
By the end of the second quarter of 2025, direct and indirect holdings of US Treasury bonds amounted to over $127 billion, ranking the company among the world’s largest creditors of the US government.
The interest income generated from these investments is not distributed to USDT token holders but remains as profit within the company. To diversify and secure these “paper dollars,” the company invests in other assets such as Bitcoin, farmland, and physical gold. Tether benefits from both capital gains and interest income without passing on the profits to token holders. In times of the crypto boom, this is an extremely successful business model.
Tether Bought More Gold Last Quarter Than Any Central Bank
Tether’s gold purchases compared to central banks, as of November 27, 2025. © Financial Times
According to the Financial Times (based on World Gold Council data), Tether Holdings has significantly expanded its gold reserves recently. In September 2025, holdings rose to a record $12.9 billion, equivalent to approximately 104 metric tons of physical gold. The value and physical reserves have doubled since the beginning of the year and Q2 2024, respectively, with Tether acquiring an average of more than one metric ton per week in 2025, making it one of the largest buyers worldwide. In the last quarter, its gold purchases even surpassed those of the central banks of Kazakhstan, Brazil, and Turkey.
Consequently, Tether’s total reserves now exceed $180 billion, with 7% invested in gold. This makes the company one of the world’s largest gold holders and not only signals distrust in fiat currencies but also drives de-dollarization, gradually moving gold further into the center of the monetary system.
Gold Price Breaks Upward from Consolidation Triangle
Gold in US Dollars, Daily Chart as of November 28, 2025. © GOLD.DE
Driven by strong physical demand, the gold price moved up significantly again this trading week. Tonight also marked a breakout from the consolidation triangle of the past four weeks.
This brings the next short-term price targets of approximately $4,200, $4,235, and $4,260 within reach.
However, the gold price has recently lagged somewhat behind the silver price, which is already on the verge of breaking out to new all-time highs. The gold price still needs approximately 4.6% or about $195 to reach that point.
Temporary pullbacks are still to be expected until the next US interest rate decision in mid-December. In the broader picture, however, after the completion of the current consolidation in the first half of 2026, the gold price should continue to rise to approximately $5,000 to $5,200.
Conclusion: Gold – Breakout from the Consolidation Triangle
In summary, November brought an impressive recovery in precious metal prices. The sharp pullback at the end of October is almost forgotten. With prices above $4,180, the gold price has clearly broken out of its consolidation triangle and should soon be able to reach last week’s resistance zone between $4,200 and $4,260.
In the coming year, the psychological mark of $5,000 should then exert its magnetic effect.
As of: November 28, 2025
Written by:
Florian Grummes
Technical Analyst, Precious Metals Expert
