Tether has completed its first independent financial statement audit, with KPMG U.S. issuing a clean opinion after reviewing its 2025 accounts and reporting a $6.814 billion reserve surplus. According to Tether, KPMG conducted the audit of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. under applicable professional standards and issued the most positive form of opinion an independent auditor can issue. The audit covered the balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity, and cash flow statement for the year ended December 31, 2025. CEO Paolo Ardoino noted that "Critics have claimed for years that Tether's audit could not be completed—we have once again proven them wrong. An unqualified opinion means Tether has received a clean audit." As per Tether, the audit was "the largest inaugural financial audit in history," marking a significant milestone for the stablecoin industry.
The audit examined transactions, internal systems, asset ownership, valuations, counterparties, and supporting documents used to prepare the accounts. As reported by Tether, KPMG examined the records supporting individual balance-sheet entries and tested the company's financial position as of December 31, 2025, along with operating results and cash flows for the full year. The audit went beyond Tether's prior quarterly attestations, as KPMG tested transactions, systems, assets, liabilities, income, cash flows and the evidence supporting them. KPMG physically counted and inspected every gold bar held by Tether, checking identifying information instead of relying solely on statements supplied by custodians or counterparties. Unlike Tether's quarterly reserve attestations, which it has published for years, the full audit subjected the company's broader financial statements and underlying evidence to independent examination, including transactions, systems, ownership records, valuations and counterparties. Tether added that all assets and statements were subject to "independent substantive testing and verification."
The audited statements reported that reserves exceeded liabilities connected to issued tokens by $6.814 billion at the end of 2025. However, Tether's most recent quarterly report from July 31, 2026 shows a $4.11 billion reserve cushion, representing a 40% decline from the KPMG-verified figure. This significant reduction occurred even as Tether booked approximately $1.5 billion in net operating profit during Q2 2026, driven largely by income from its US Treasury holdings and repurchase agreements. The company's asset mix has evolved significantly, with the Q2 attestation showing physical gold holdings of about 146.2 metric tons and Bitcoin holdings of 98,933 BTC. Tether has also expanded its tokenized gold business, with physical reserves backing Tether Gold (XAUt) rising 9.5% in the second quarter, making XAUt the largest tokenized commodity product with around $2.7 billion in value. According to Arkham Intelligence data, Tether holds nearly $60 billion in Bitcoin in its reserves and has increased its gold purchases significantly in recent years. Tether's USDT reserves now consist of 75% T-bills and cash equivalents, 10% gold and metals, and only 3% Bitcoin exposure, representing a shift from the previous 77% T-bill backing that S&P Global had criticized.
At the time of the March engagement, USDT had a market capitalization above $184 billion and more than 550 million users, according to Tether. The company later identified its user base as above 610 million, largely across emerging markets where people use USDT for payments, savings, remittances, and access to U.S. dollars. Tether's USDT market capitalization currently sits near $183 billion, ranking third among all cryptocurrencies with about 61% of the $301 billion stablecoin market, more than twice the roughly $72 billion held by its nearest rival, Circle's USDC, according to DefiLlama. The company has introduced USAT as a separate dollar-backed token built for the American market, with Anchorage Digital Bank issuing USAT under a U.S.-regulated structure. Despite the company's growth, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has shown little interest in taking it public, writing on X in June 2025: "No need to go public."
The audit's use of U.S. GAAP provides American investors and counterparties with a familiar accounting basis for reviewing Tether's 2025 financial statements. However, an unqualified audit opinion does not determine whether USDT complies with U.S. stablecoin law or qualifies for continued listing on American trading platforms. The GENIUS Act established federal rules for payment stablecoin issuers, with President Donald Trump signing the legislation in July 2025, though implementing rules remain incomplete. Tether has not released the actual statements themselves, with notes, accounting policies, reserve composition, and related-party disclosures remaining unavailable for outside analysts to test the numbers independently. The stakes have only grown as USDT swelled to over $180 billion in market capitalization, while Tether has become a major buyer of U.S. government debt for reserve assets. As per CEO Paolo Ardoino, "Tether has evolved from a disruptive stablecoin issuer into one of the most financially significant and operationally sophisticated private companies in the world," with the audit demonstrating that "our financial infrastructure and governance have evolved alongside that responsibility." CFO Simon McWilliams emphasized that "this was our Finance team stepping into the highest league and leading in it," setting a higher standard for accountability across the stablecoin market.
