Tether said Thursday that KPMG U.S. has issued an unqualified audit opinion on the 2025 financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V., the entity that issues the USDT stablecoin. The opinion marks Tether’s first completed independent audit after years in which the company published reserve attestations rather than a full set of audited accounts.
A KPMG U.S. spokesperson confirmed that the firm issued the opinion for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, under standards set by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The spokesperson declined further comment, citing client confidentiality.
Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said the audited entity, Tether International, is the issuer of USDT. The company said an unqualified opinion—often called a clean opinion—means the auditor issued its assessment without reservations, exceptions, or caveats.
The development gives USDT users and counterparties a fuller view of the company’s finances than the quarterly reserve reports Tether has released in recent years. Those reports have focused on the value and composition of assets held against tokens in circulation at a particular date. A financial audit examines a wider body of financial information, including transactions, controls, ownership records and reporting processes.
Audit covered full financial statements
Tether said KPMG reviewed the company’s transactions, systems, asset valuations, counterparties, ownership records and evidence supporting its financial position at the end of 2025. The audit included Tether International’s balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement and statement of changes in equity, according to the company.
Chief financial officer Simon McWilliams said the audited statements showed that Tether International’s reserves exceeded its liabilities by $6.8 billion as of Dec. 31, 2025. That surplus is separate from the amount of assets held to meet USDT redemptions, providing a reported equity buffer above liabilities.
Tether also said KPMG physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar held by the company, verifying each bar’s existence and identifying information. That process goes beyond checking custodian statements or reports supplied by counterparties, though Tether did not disclose in its announcement the amount of gold covered by the physical inspection.
The audit arrives while USDT remains the largest stablecoin by circulating supply. McWilliams said USDT’s market capitalization was above $183 billion in August 2026. Tether said its reserve portfolio includes roughly $141 billion in U.S. Treasuries, placing government debt at the center of the assets used to support the token.
The scale of those Treasury holdings has made Tether increasingly relevant to short-term government-debt markets. Its reported holdings sit largely in instruments designed to be readily convertible to cash, though the audit announcement did not provide a new asset-by-asset liquidity breakdown or details of the maturity profile of the Treasury portfolio.
A break from years of attestations
Tether has promised a full audit before. In 2017, it said it had engaged Friedman LLP to conduct one, but that work ended without an audit being completed.
Since then, the company has released regular reserve attestations prepared by BDO Italia. An attestation differs from a financial audit in scope and timing. It assesses specified information, such as the reported value of reserves and liabilities at a given point, while an audit covers complete financial statements over a reporting period and requires the auditor to obtain evidence supporting the accounts.
Tether itself has previously described the BDO Italia reports as snapshots of its reserve position rather than comprehensive financial audits. The KPMG engagement therefore addresses a disclosure gap that critics, regulators and users have raised repeatedly around the issuer of the market’s most widely used dollar-linked token.
The company said in March that it had appointed a Big Four accounting firm for its first full audit but did not identify the firm. Separate reporting that month named KPMG as the auditor and said PwC had been hired to assist with internal systems preparation. Thursday’s announcement named KPMG but made no reference to PwC.
McWilliams joined Tether as chief financial officer in early 2025, shortly before the audit process described by the company. His appointment gave Tether a finance executive overseeing the move from reserve attestations toward a full annual audit.
Past enforcement actions shaped scrutiny
Tether’s financial disclosures have faced unusually sustained scrutiny following regulatory cases in the United States. In 2021, Tether and affiliated companies reached an $18.5 million settlement with the New York Attorney General over statements about USDT’s backing. The company did not admit wrongdoing as part of that settlement.
Also in 2021, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Tether $41 million over statements that USDT was fully backed by U.S. dollars. The CFTC said Tether had represented that every USDT was backed one-to-one by corresponding dollars in reserve for all relevant periods, while the agency found that was not always the case.
Those cases pushed the distinction between a token’s stated backing and the quality of evidence behind those claims to the forefront of the stablecoin market. They also left Tether under pressure to provide more detailed and independently reviewed financial information as USDT’s role in trading, settlement and cross-border transfers expanded.
An unqualified audit opinion does not function as a promise that a stablecoin will never face redemption pressure or market disruption. It does mean that KPMG reached its conclusion on Tether International’s 2025 financial statements after conducting an audit under AICPA standards, based on the evidence it obtained.
For USDT users, the audit adds a formal annual accounting review alongside Tether’s periodic reserve reporting. The next test will be whether Tether maintains that reporting cadence, provides audited accounts consistently in future years, and gives the market comparable visibility as its reserve portfolio and token supply continue to change.
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