Tether has completed its first full annual financial audit, with KPMG U.S. issuing an unqualified opinion on the stablecoin issuer’s 2025 financial statements. In its announcement, Tether said the audit confirmed that the statements fairly presented the company’s financial position, operating results, and cash flows in all material respects as of Dec. 31, 2025.
The audit covered Tether’s full set of financial statements, including the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. It also reviewed transaction records, system controls, ownership documentation, valuation methods, and counterparty information. Tether said KPMG found that reserve assets exceeded liabilities by $6.814 billion, setting a new high for excess reserves.
How the audit differs from prior quarterly attestations
Tether has for years published quarterly reserve attestations from accounting firms, but the company said those procedures are materially different from a full audit.
- An attestation provides limited verification of specific information, such as reserve composition, and relies on documents and management representations.
- An audit involves an independent review of the full financial statements and the evidence beneath them, including transaction sampling, system testing, third-party confirmations, and physical inspection.
In this case, KPMG also went to storage facilities and counted Tether’s gold bars individually instead of relying only on custodian records. The report described that approach as rare in crypto audit practice.
Tether’s profit and market scale
Tether said it generated more than $10 billion in net profit for the full year 2025. In the second quarter of 2026, net operating profit reached $1.5 billion, driven mainly by interest income from U.S. Treasuries and repurchase agreements.
USDT, first issued in 2014, has become one of the core pieces of infrastructure in the crypto market. Based on figures released by Tether, USDT’s market capitalization stands at about $183 billion, equal to 61% of the total stablecoin market value of $301 billion. The report said that makes USDT roughly 2.5 times the size of USDC, which it placed at about $72 billion.
Expansion beyond stablecoins
Tether said it has also been deploying profits into non-stablecoin businesses. The report said the company invested $20 million each this year in Argentine digital bank Ualá and Brazilian crypto platform Mercado Bitcoin. It also led an $50 million financing round for AI sleep technology startup Eight Sleep.
For tokenized gold, the company said physical gold reserves backing XAUt grew 9.5% in the second quarter. XAUt’s market capitalization now stands at about $2.7 billion, which the report described as making it the world’s largest tokenized commodity product.
Why the audit matters
The report framed the audit as a turning point in Tether’s long-running transparency debate, which it traced back to 2017 accusations over opaque reserves, followed by lawsuits, an SEC investigation, and a series of quarterly assurance reports.
According to the report, the unqualified opinion matters for several reasons:
- Traditional financial institutions often require audited financial statements, not only reserve attestations, before allocating to stablecoins under internal compliance rules.
- Authorities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia are moving toward audit obligations for stablecoin issuers, and Tether has now taken that step.
- USDT is widely used in on-chain payments, cross-border trade, and emerging markets, and a full audit gives holders a clearer basis for assessing asset backing.
Ardoino’s comments and pressure on peers
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino shared news of the completed audit on X and reiterated the company’s commitment to transparency. The report also noted that in June 2025, when responding to IPO rumors, Ardoino said there was 「no need to go public」 and argued that Tether’s private structure allowed it to set its own audit timetable instead of following public-market disclosure rules.
With Tether now completing a full audit, attention is shifting to other stablecoin issuers. The report pointed to Circle, Paxos, and newer issuers as names to watch:
- USDC (Circle): Circle has already published multiple reserve reports issued by BDO. The next question is whether it will move to a full audit.
- PAXG / GUSD (Paxos): The report said Paxos has long been viewed favorably by regulators on audit and compliance standards, and that gap has narrowed after Tether’s latest step.
- Emerging stablecoins: With rules such as the European Union’s MiCA pushing issuers toward regular audits, Tether’s approach may become a benchmark for the sector.
The report also referenced Tether’s earlier decision to pause a $20 billion financing plan while engaging a Big Four accounting firm for a full audit, as well as the company’s completion of a top-tier SOC compliance audit.