Tether, the company behind USDT: reserves, KPMG audit, regulators and freezes

Tether is the company that issues USDT, the largest stablecoin, with about $183 billion in circulation on 21 October 2026 at 18:17 UTC according to DefiLlama. It earns its money from the interest on the reserves behind the token. Its latest reserve report, signed by the accounting firm BDO on 31 July 2026, shows assets exceeding liabilities by $4.11 billion on 30 June, half the $8.23 billion margin of three months earlier.

The same year brought Tether its first audit by a Big Four firm, a second dollar token built for US rules, and a Senate staff report on how quickly it freezes wallets tied to Iran and Hezbollah. Tether disputes that report. No charge has been brought against the company.

This page covers Tether the company: who runs it, how it earns money, what backs its tokens and how regulators have treated it. How the token works and where to hold it is explained on our Tether (USDT) coin page.

Tether, the company behind USDT

The tokens are issued by Tether International, S.A. de C.V., a company incorporated in El Salvador. The notes to the June 2026 BDO report describe it as an authorised stablecoin issuer and digital asset service provider under El Salvador’s Digital Asset Issuance Law, subject to the National Commission of Digital Assets (CNAD). The same notes say it is registered as a Money Services Business with FinCEN in the United States and reports to El Salvador’s Financial Investigation Unit.

The move to San Salvador dates from 13 January 2025, when Tether announced its licence there and a plan to set up the group’s headquarters in the country. Tether’s own history page dates the launch of USDT to 2014. Today the group runs several products:

• USDT, the dollar token, by far the largest line of business.
• USAT, a dollar token for the United States, issued through Anchorage Digital Bank since 27 January 2026.
• XAUt, a token backed by physical gold, launched in 2020 according to Tether’s history page.
• CNH₮, an offshore yuan token whose redemption obligation ends on 20 February 2027, according to the BDO notes. The euro token EUR₮ stopped being redeemable on 27 November 2025.
• Hadron, a platform for tokenizing real-world assets launched in 2024, and WDK, a kit for developers who build wallets.

Scale is what sets Tether apart. DefiLlama counted $305.09 billion of stablecoins in total at the same hour on 21 October, so USDT made up about 60% of the list. Circle’s USDC, the second largest, stood at $72.49 billion.

How Tether makes money

A verified customer sends dollars and receives USDT one for one. The token pays no interest. Tether places the dollars mostly in short-term US Treasury bills and reverse repurchase agreements and keeps the yield, which on about $183 billion adds up quickly.

Tether reported about $1.5 billion of net operating profit for the second quarter of 2026 and about $1.04 billion of net profit for the first. For 2025 Ardoino put the figure at about $10 billion, according to the Financial Times as reported by CoinDesk on 4 February 2026. He also said the user base grew by more than 30 million in the second quarter, without giving a total.

Holding USDT costs nothing. Redemption at Tether, sending tokens back for dollars, is open only to verified direct customers, and the BDO report values the tokens net of a 10 basis point redemption fee. The current minimum amount is not stated in the documents we read. Most holders never deal with Tether directly: they leave USDT by selling it on an exchange.

Part of the profit has gone into assets that are not dollars: gold, bitcoin and stakes in other companies, covered below.

Tether reserves on 30 June 2026: what backs USDT

The latest reserve report is the BDO “Financial Figures and Reserves Report” as of 30 June 2026 at 11:59 PM UTC, approved on 31 July and signed for Tether by its chairman, Giancarlo Devasini. It counts total assets of $187,751,426,411 against liabilities of $183,641,897,215, of which $183,622,105,630 are digital tokens issued. The difference, $4,109,529,196, is what Tether calls its excess reserves. The full report is published as a PDF.

Reserve asset, 30 June 2026	Amount (US$)	Share of assets
US Treasury bills (average maturity under 90 days)	114,960,963,604	61.2%
Overnight reverse repurchase agreements	18,625,552,412	9.9%
Term reverse repurchase agreements	6,993,428,950	3.7%
Non-US Treasury bills	22,374,689	under 0.1%
Cash and bank deposits	40,307,440	under 0.1%
Subtotal: cash equivalents and short-term deposits	140,642,627,095	74.9%
Precious metals (physical gold at $4,008.02 an ounce)	18,838,357,171	10.0%
Secured loans	13,453,749,726	7.2%
Bitcoin (at $58,642.15)	5,801,630,681	3.1%
Other investments	5,244,911,675	2.8%
Public equities (indirect gold, bitcoin and other exposure)	3,761,438,892	2.0%
Corporate bonds	8,711,171	under 0.1%
Total assets	187,751,426,411	100%

Shares are Coindaro’s calculation from the BDO table. Treasury bills alone make up 61.2% of assets; with repurchase agreements and cash the figure reaches 74.9%. The $141 billion of Treasury exposure that Tether cited for 31 March counts direct bills and indirect holdings together.

The other $47.1 billion, about 25% of assets, moves with markets. The report values gold and bitcoin at their 30 June prices without giving quantities. Tether says it holds more than 146 tonnes of gold, and Forklog put the bitcoin at 98,933 coins. Tether also said it cut its secured lending by about $2.38 billion, or 15%, during the quarter. The report does not name the borrowers.

A buffer halved in one quarter

On 31 March 2026 the excess stood at $8,232,209,778, a record, against total assets of $191,767,741,495, according to Tether’s first-quarter release of 1 May. Three months later it was $4,109,529,196. The BDO table of changes in equity shows a financial result of minus $3,171 million for the first half of 2026 and net capital movements of plus $943 million; the report does not break either line down. Ardoino’s comment in the July release: “Through all of the volatility, USD₮ remained fully backed with our reserves still exceeding liabilities by $4.11 billion.”

Rating agencies look at the same mix. On 26 November 2025 S&P Global Ratings cut its stability assessment of USDT to 5, “weak”, the lowest point on its scale, from 4. According to The Block, S&P counted higher-risk assets at 24% of reserves on 30 September 2025, against 17% a year earlier, and noted that bitcoin backed about 5.6% of USDT in circulation while the surplus covered about 3.9%. Ardoino rejected the assessment on X and called Tether overcapitalised.

Tether audit or attestation: what BDO and KPMG checked

For most of its history Tether has published attestations, not audits. The quarterly reports come from BDO Advisory Services S.r.l. in Milan, engaged by Tether Global Investments Fund SICAF SA. The June report gives reasonable assurance under the ISAE 3000 (Revised) standard and was signed in Milan on 31 July 2026 by partner Lelio Bigogno.

An attestation checks the figures at one moment. BDO’s report says so: it covers 30 June 2026 only, secured loans are carried at amortised cost, valuations assume normal trading conditions, and the notes to the report fall outside the assurance. Activity before and after that date was not tested.

The audit is new. On 13 August 2026 Tether announced that KPMG U.S. had issued an unqualified opinion on the 2025 financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. Chief financial officer Simon McWilliams said: “We subjected our financial statements to the scrutiny of a Big Four audit.” The release says reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.814 billion at the end of 2025 and that KPMG physically counted and inspected every gold bar. Tether calls it the largest inaugural financial audit in history, a claim we could not check.

The release links to no report and does not say the statements will be published. The Defiant noted that neither the signed audit report nor the audited statements came with the announcement.

Two figures for the same date also sit side by side. The KPMG release gives an excess of $6.814 billion at 31 December 2025, while the comparative column of the June BDO report shows equity of $6,338 million at that date. Neither document explains the $476 million gap.

Circle, for comparison, publishes monthly attestations by Deloitte on the reserves of USDC; our Circle page sets out what they show. Tether’s report for 30 September 2026 was not out on 21 October. Its first attempt at an audit ended in January 2018, when Tether confirmed that its relationship with the accounting firm Friedman LLP had been dissolved before an audit was completed.

Where USDT circulates: Tron and Ethereum hold 91%

The BDO notes list 13 networks where Tether itself issues USDT: Ethereum, Tron, Ton, Liquid, Solana, Avalanche, Tezos, Near, Cosmos, Celo, Kaia, Aptos and Polkadot Asset Hub. Two of them hold almost everything. DefiLlama’s per-chain data for 21 October 2026 shows $92.63 billion on Tron, about 51%, and $72.95 billion on Ethereum, about 40%. Solana carries $2.69 billion, TON $0.57 billion and Aptos $0.47 billion.

DefiLlama also counts USDT on networks missing from Tether’s list, such as BNB Chain ($9.18 billion), Arbitrum and Polygon. These are bridged or omnichain versions such as USDT0, and holders there depend on the bridge or its operator as well as on Tether.

Tether and regulators: from New York to El Salvador

The record starts badly. On 23 February 2021 the New York Attorney General settled with Bitfinex and Tether for $18.5 million. The companies agreed to stop trading with New Yorkers, and Tether agreed to disclose the assets behind its tokens by category, including loans to affiliates. The office found that Tether had at times held no reserves behind its tokens and that Bitfinex had hidden a loss of about $850 million tied to the payment processor Crypto Capital. Attorney General Letitia James called Tether’s claim of full dollar backing at all times “a lie”.

On 15 October 2021 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Tether to pay a $41 million civil penalty, plus $1.5 million for Bitfinex. The CFTC found that Tether held enough fiat reserves to back USDT on only 27.6% of the days in a 26-month sample, and that it misrepresented its reserves from at least 1 June 2016 to 25 February 2019.

2022 tested the reserves in practice. Tether had cut its commercial paper from $24.2 billion to $19.9 billion during the first quarter. When Terra collapsed in May, USDT traded as low as about $0.95 on 12 May, and Tether processed about $10 billion of redemptions in the following days, according to Fortune.

In October 2023 Tether said its chief technology officer, Paolo Ardoino, would become chief executive in December, replacing Jean-Louis van der Velde. The El Salvador licence followed in January 2025.

One court case is still open. The BDO report discloses a class action in New York over the fall in the price of bitcoin in 2017 and 2018, for which Tether holds no provision. On 2 July 2026 the Second Circuit refused Tether and Bitfinex leave to appeal the class certification, according to MLex and Law360.

Tether USAT and the GENIUS Act

The GENIUS Act (Public Law 119-27), enacted on 18 July 2025, is the first US federal stablecoin law. Under section 3(b)(1), from 18 July 2028 digital asset service providers may not offer a payment stablecoin unless a permitted issuer stands behind it, subject to exceptions. Section 18 is the route for foreign issuers: the Treasury must find their home regime comparable, and they must register with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and hold enough reserves in US institutions for US customers.

The OCC finalised its GENIUS Act rule on 21 October 2026 and confirmed that the Act takes effect on 18 January 2027.

USDT, issued from El Salvador, would need the foreign route. Ardoino said in July 2025 that “Tether will comply with the GENIUS Act.” A year later, on 17 July 2026, CoinDesk reported that as much as a quarter of USDT’s reserves sat in assets the law does not accept, such as precious metals, loans and bitcoin, and that an OCC footnote suggests foreign issuers that miss certain requirements could face limits before 2028. We found no public Treasury comparability decision for El Salvador.

Tether’s answer for the US market is a second token. USAT was announced on 12 September 2025, with Bo Hines, formerly executive director of the White House crypto council, as chief executive of the US unit. It launched on 27 January 2026 through Anchorage Digital Bank, which the OCC supervises, with Cantor Fitzgerald as reserve custodian and primary dealer, according to CoinDesk. Ardoino called it “a dollar-backed token made in America”.

USAT is still small. Its first attestation, at 31 January 2026, counted 17,501,391 tokens against $17,604,716 of reserves, and the April report showed more than 140 million tokens backed by $141,178,400, mostly reverse repos on US Treasuries, according to The Block. That is less than 0.1% of the USDT supply.

Why USDT left European exchanges under MiCA

Tether never sought authorisation for USDT under MiCA, the EU’s crypto-asset regulation, and EU-licensed platforms dropped it: Coinbase for European users on 13 December 2024, Crypto.com from 31 January 2025 and Binance’s spot pairs in the European Economic Area by 31 March 2025, according to Cointelegraph and DL News. On 8 October 2026 the European Securities and Markets Authority issued a statement on stablecoins without MiCA authorisation, without naming any token; our report on the ESMA deadline explains what it asks of platforms. Holding USDT in a wallet you control remains legal in the EU.

Tether’s own euro token went the other way. The company said in November 2024 that it would end EUR₮, according to The Block, and stopped being obliged to redeem it on 27 November 2025.

Tether freezes, sanctions and the Senate staff report

USDT can be frozen because the token contracts include a blacklist. Once an address is listed, its tokens cannot move, and a court order can then lead to their seizure. In September 2026 federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed a civil forfeiture complaint for 61.2 million USDT on ten Tron addresses that Tether had already frozen, according to Coinotag.

Tether’s own figures come from its release of 28 September 2026. It says it has helped freeze more than $5 billion in total, over $2.4 billion of it in cases connected to US authorities, working with more than 340 law enforcement agencies in 70 countries. In 2026 it froze about $550 million tied to Iran’s central bank and sanctions networks: more than $344 million on two addresses in April, which OFAC designated the next day, and more than $130 million on four wallets in July, after the Treasury designated them. The release does not itemise the remaining $76 million or so, and it gives two different counts of investigations supported. Ardoino said “USD₮ is not a haven for sanctioned actors, terrorist organizations or criminal networks.”

Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing is the other main requester: Tether says it froze more than 22 million USDT in over 40 of its cases, covering more than 640 addresses. The T3 Financial Crime Unit, set up in 2024 by Tether, Tron and the analytics firm TRM Labs, said in May 2026 that it had frozen more than $450 million, according to The Block.

The Senate report looks at the same activity from the other side. It was released on 28 September by the Democratic minority staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal, as a preliminary report, not a finding of the subcommittee. Coindaro could not open the document. According to Decrypt, it found that 84% of 846 sanctioned or seizure-targeted wallets transacted only or almost only in USDT. Blockonomi reports that 34 of 39 Hezbollah-linked wallets flagged by Israel in June 2023 were frozen only in March 2024, after more than $34.6 million had left them.

Ardoino answered on X that since 2023 Tether had frozen addresses “on average 4 weeks prior to OFAC & NBCTF official sanction designation”, and that Iran-linked stablecoin volumes had fallen 94%, CoinDesk reported on 19 October. Tether has not published the addresses or the period behind those figures. At DC Fintech Week he added: “I believe it’s important for the public also to hear our side of the story.”

Blumenthal has since turned to Cantor Fitzgerald. In a letter of 8 October to its chairman, Brandon Lutnick, with answers due on 23 October, he estimated that Cantor’s 5% stake in Tether had grown from $600 million to about $10 billion, according to Decrypt. Our news report on the Senate findings and Tether’s reply has the details. The scrutiny is not new: in October 2024 the Wall Street Journal reported a federal investigation in Manhattan and said the Treasury was weighing sanctions. Tether rejected the report, and no official has confirmed either point.

Tether investments: from Rumble to Juventus

Tether spends its profit on more than gold and bitcoin. It put $775 million into the video platform Rumble in December 2024, according to Cointelegraph, and completed the purchase of about 70% of the Argentine agricultural group Adecoagro in April 2025. Its history page lists earlier investments, among them the German computing firm Northern Data in 2023. We found no 2026 figure for the size of each stake.

Its best-known attempt failed. On 12 December 2025 Tether sent Exor, which owns 65.4% of Juventus, a binding all-cash offer for that stake, with a plan for a public offer on the rest and a promise of €1 billion of investment in the club. Exor’s board rejected it unanimously the next day. The Block put the offer at €2.66 a share, about €1.1 billion for the club, and said Tether already held about 11.5%.

The pace has not slowed in 2026. Hadron is to issue tokenized real estate for institutional investors in Saudi Arabia, CoinDesk reported on 6 August. On 9 September Tether and Fasanara Capital launched StableFund, a $400 million evergreen private credit fund that aims to raise up to $3 billion from outside investors. Between 14 and 21 October alone Tether released an on-device speech recognition model for smart glasses and robots, invested in the AI payments firm AIsa, joined chipmaker Tenstorrent’s $1.5 billion Series E at a $6.2 billion valuation and led a pre-seed round in the Bolivian payments start-up Peso. It did not disclose the amounts.

Tether has also tried to sell a slice of itself. Talks in 2025 explored raising up to $20 billion at a valuation of around $500 billion; on 4 February 2026 the Financial Times, as reported by CoinDesk, said advisers were now discussing about $5 billion. Ardoino’s line: “If we were selling zero, we would be very happy as well.” No close has been reported.

Who owns and runs Tether

The company is privately held and does not publish its shareholders. The only outside stake on record is Cantor Fitzgerald’s. On 24 November 2024 The Block, citing the Wall Street Journal, reported that Cantor had negotiated a 5% stake within the previous year, worth up to $600 million, which valued Tether at about $12 billion. Cantor also holds most of Tether’s reserves. Tether called the relationship “entirely professional, based on managing reserves.”

The people in public view:

• Paolo Ardoino, chief executive since December 2023, previously chief technology officer, a role he also held at the exchange Bitfinex at the time of his appointment.
• Giancarlo Devasini, chairman of the board of Tether International, who signs the reserve reports.
• Simon McWilliams, chief financial officer, who presented the KPMG audit in August 2026.
• Bo Hines, chief executive of Tether’s US business and of USAT since September 2025.

Hines is the subject of a press report. On 15 October 2026 the Wall Street Journal, as relayed by Protos, reported that Nxum Capital, a firm Hines started with his father, earned $6.3 million from a “strategic brand and public affairs plan” for Tether while he worked at the White House. A Nxum representative told the paper that Hines “did not receive any Tether-derived funds during that period.” Tether did not immediately respond to Protos. These are allegations, not findings.

Is Tether safe? The risks, with their dates

Every dated report so far shows reserves above liabilities: $4.11 billion on 30 June 2026 according to BDO, $6.814 billion at the end of 2025 according to Tether’s account of the KPMG audit. About 75% of assets are Treasury bills, repos and cash, and the business earned about $1.5 billion in a single quarter. We found no report of Tether failing to pay a verified customer, including in May 2022; that is an absence of evidence, not a guarantee.

Against that, the margin halved between March and June 2026 while about $47 billion of assets sit in gold, bitcoin, loans, equities and other investments. The quarterly reports cover a single date, and the audited statements are not public. The enforcement record from 2021 and the New York class action remain on file. USDT has no MiCA authorisation and no GENIUS status yet, ownership is largely undisclosed, and much depends on a few people and on Cantor as custodian.

Coindaro rates the project 4 out of 5 on risk. This page describes a company; it is not advice to hold, buy or sell any of its tokens.

What to watch at Tether until 2028

• 23 October 2026: Cantor Fitzgerald’s answer to Senator Blumenthal is due.
• The BDO report for 30 September 2026, not yet published on 21 October, will show whether the $4.11 billion margin recovered.
• 3 November 2026: US midterm elections, which decide which party chairs Senate committees from January.
• Early January 2027: the end of the three months ESMA gave EU platforms on 8 October, as the press reads its statement.
• 18 January 2027: the GENIUS Act takes effect.
• 20 February 2027: Tether’s obligation to redeem CNH₮ ends.
• 18 July 2028: US platforms may offer only stablecoins from permitted issuers or foreign issuers that qualify, which USDT is not today.