Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company has reached a long-sought milestone after KPMG U.S. completed a full independent audit of the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V., the issuer of USDT, for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025. Speaking on The Starting Block on Aug. 14, Ardoino said the balance sheet of the audited entity is not particularly complicated and argued that the main reason a full audit took so long was the hostile stance toward the digital asset industry under the previous U.S. administration. He said Tether will now seek a full financial audit every year while continuing to publish quarterly attestation reports. Ardoino also pushed back on long-running criticism of Tether’s reserves and transparency, saying the company had already weathered major redemption pressure, including roughly $7 billion redeemed in 48 hours in 2022, equal to about 10% of reserves at the time. The interview also touched on Tether’s broader balance sheet and strategic direction. Ardoino said the company has accumulated about 150 tons of gold and holds more than 100,000 BTC. He said Tether does not need outside capital, even though interest in its equity remains strong, and added that the firm would be selective about any future shareholders. He also said Tether is willing to allocate budget to support work that uses AI to review Bitcoin code and improve wallet security.

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley is urging Americans to accept what he called a compromise between privacy and public safety as criticism of the company’s AI-powered license plate camera network intensifies. The debate has moved well beyond local complaints. Flock’s cameras have reportedly been vandalized across the United States, while the company is now facing pressure from both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. In an interview aired Saturday on Fox News, Langley said the country should not treat privacy and safety as mutually exclusive choices. His comments came as lawmakers advanced separate efforts against the company, including a planned bill from Senator Bernie Sanders targeting what he called “AI mass surveillance,” a House Republican measure led by Representative Tim Burchett to block federal purchases of Flock cameras, and a Senate inquiry opened by Senator Josh Hawley. The scrutiny has also been fueled by recent investigations from The Washington Post and WIRED. Those reports raised concerns about police misuse of Flock’s systems and about an AI tool that can reportedly identify drivers through movement patterns alone, without starting from a name or license plate. Flock says its tools supported more than 1 million criminal investigations last year and helped locate over 10,000 missing people, though those figures come from the company’s own survey-based methodology.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said KPMG U.S. has completed a full independent audit of the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V., the issuer of USDT, for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025. In an interview with The Starting Block on Aug. 14, Ardoino said the audit confirmed that Tether held more than $6 billion in excess equity as of that date. He also said the company has accumulated about 150 tons of gold and more than 100,000 bitcoin, with the gold reserves physically checked bar by bar during the audit process. Ardoino attributed the delay in obtaining a full audit to the hostile stance of the previous U.S. administration toward the digital asset industry, saying that attitude created uncertainty for accounting firms. He said Tether plans to undergo a full financial audit every year going forward while continuing to publish quarterly attestation reports. The interview also covered criticism of Tether’s reserves and ownership transparency, reports about potential private fundraising, the company’s AI initiative QVAC, and Tether’s willingness to allocate budget to support AI-assisted reviews of Bitcoin code and wallet security after recent security incidents involving Coldcard and Coinkite.

Ethereum client Besu fixed five security vulnerabilities in version 26.7.1, which was released on July 27, after the issues were identified by blockchain security firm CertiK. Besu then published four detailed security advisories on Aug. 14, with technical details held back until after the patch rollout so node operators had time to upgrade first. According to CertiK Security Engineering Director and Senior Audit Partner Jialiang Chang, that patch-first approach created an 18-day buffer for operators to identify affected deployments, test the new release, and coordinate upgrades with validators or consortium participants. The disclosed issues touched block propagation handling, future-height consensus proposal caching, WebSocket subscription limits, and JSON-RPC filter creation. If left unresolved, the flaws could let attackers drain node memory or thread resources, affecting node availability and consensus processing. Bitcoin.com News said CertiK used its Chain Scan method in a private multi-node test network to run adversarial testing across peer-to-peer, HTTP RPC, WebSocket RPC, and consensus interfaces, and provided reproducible testing tools to the Besu team.

Ethereum client Besu fixed five security vulnerabilities identified by blockchain security firm CertiK in version 26.7.1, released on July 27, and later published four detailed security advisories on Aug. 14. The vulnerability details were held back at first to give node operators time to upgrade. CertiK Security Engineering Director and Senior Audit Partner Jialiang Chang said the patch-first approach created an 18-day window for operators to identify affected deployments, test the new release and coordinate upgrades with validators or consortium participants. The issues touched block propagation handling, caching of future-height consensus proposals, WebSocket subscription limits and JSON-RPC filter creation. If left unpatched, an attacker could exhaust node memory or thread resources, affecting node availability and consensus processing. CertiK said it used its Chain Scan method to run adversarial testing against peer-to-peer, HTTP RPC, WebSocket RPC and consensus interfaces in a private multi-node test network, and provided reproducible test tools to the Besu team.

Polish crypto exchange Zondacrypto, formerly BitBay, is facing a deepening crisis tied to the 2022 disappearance of founder Sylwester Suszek and the later disappearance of his successor, lawyer Przemyslaw Kral. According to the report, Suszek vanished after sending desperate messages to family members asking for Bitcoin to secure his release, and his relatives believe he was killed. Prosecutors later linked one of his business associates, Marian Wszolek, to the case, though he also disappeared after charges were announced. The exchange later rebranded and operated through BB Trade Estonia, but scrutiny grew as Estonia tightened oversight of crypto companies. A report from the country’s Financial Intelligence Unit said nearly three-quarters of supervised firms had not filed a single suspicious transaction report in 2021, and Zondacrypto was described as one of them. Auditors in 2023 and 2024 also questioned whether the parent company’s reported assets were real. Kral, who took over after Suszek vanished, publicly claimed on April 16 that the company held more than $330 million in Bitcoin reserves, but said access depended on a private key known only to Suszek. The wallet he referred to, holding 4,500 BTC, had reportedly shown no activity for nearly a decade. Polish prosecutors now estimate potential losses of at least 350 million zloty, with more than 30,000 customers reported as victims, and the exchange case has been merged with the Suszek disappearance investigation.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has released a proposed rule, Regulation Crypto Assets, aimed at creating a tailored issuance framework for investment contracts involving crypto assets. The proposal introduces two Securities Act Section 5 registration exemptions: a Startup Exemption for projects raising up to $5 million over as long as four years, and a Fundraising Exemption for issuers raising up to $75 million in any 12-month period, with audited financial statements and ongoing reporting required under the larger path. It also includes an Investment Contract Safe Harbor that would allow certain crypto assets to fall outside investment contract treatment once the issuer has completed, or permanently stopped, the essential managerial efforts previously promised to investors. The SEC said the proposal reflects longstanding problems with relying on the Howey test and disclosure rules not built for token economics, governance, and code security. The rule was published on Aug. 18 and has entered a 60-day public comment period. The proposal arrives as the CLARITY Act remains stalled in the Senate, leaving the agency to pursue a regulatory route while legislation remains unsettled.

Blockchain security audit platform Sherlock said it has launched Sherlock Audit Engine, a system it describes as combining its strongest AI security methods into a coordinated review workflow. The company said the goal is to open a new stage of AI-native security auditing. Sherlock added that its team spent several months building the engine in a non-public environment and tested it against high-risk code. The Audit Engine is now live and can conduct coordinated AI security reviews for smart contracts and other code.