Tether Completes First Full KPMG Audit: Reserves Exceed Liabilities by $6.8B

Tether has completed its first full financial audit in history, rather than the usual quarterly attestation. KPMG U.S. examined the company's 2025 financial statements and issued an unqualified opinion. Reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.814 billion.

That is a much deeper level of scrutiny than the attestations Tether has published in recent years. USDT, the world's largest stablecoin, now backs more than $180 billion in circulation, so the reliability of its reserves affects millions of wallets and trading accounts worldwide. In its own press release, the company called the review "the largest inaugural financial audit in history," though that claim is hard to verify independently for now.

Audit versus attestation: what actually changed

An attestation checks one specific slice of data, such as the composition of reserves on a given date. The auditor confirms only what it sees at that moment and does not dig into how those assets got there. A full financial audit works very differently. It tests transactions, assets, liabilities, cash flows and the underlying records that support all of it, across the entire reporting year.

For large financial firms, an annual audit from one of the four biggest accounting networks, KPMG, Deloitte, EY or PwC, is treated as a baseline of trust. Banks, insurers and public companies go through this almost by default every year. Stablecoin issuers still face no such mandatory rule, so every step in that direction draws outsized attention from regulators and traders alike.

Tether has published quarterly attestations for years after settling an investigation with the New York Attorney General's office. Back then, the company agreed to pay $41 million and to disclose the composition of its reserves regularly, though the attestation format always left room for critics to doubt it. In March 2026, Tether said it had hired one of the "Big Four" firms for a full audit of USDT. Five months later, KPMG finished the work.

What KPMG actually checked

According to Tether, auditors tested transactions, internal systems, asset valuations, counterparties and ownership records. Separately, the KPMG team physically counted the gold bars held in the company's reserves. An "unqualified opinion" means the auditor found the statements fairly presented the company's financial position under U.S. GAAP, with no reservations attached.

"For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed."

- Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, from the company's press release, August 13, 2026

A KPMG U.S. spokesperson confirmed the firm issued an unqualified opinion on Tether International's 2025 financial statements but declined to comment on further details, citing client confidentiality. CoinDesk also asked Tether whether it would release KPMG's full report for independent review, and has not yet received a response.

Tether's reserves, in numbers

The company did not disclose the full reserve breakdown in its statement. In prior quarterly attestations, short-term U.S. government bonds and cash equivalents traditionally made up the bulk of Tether's reserves, with a smaller share in gold and bitcoin. That is why the physical count of gold bars by KPMG auditors carries some symbolic weight, since it is one of the few assets in Tether's portfolio that exists as physical metal rather than a ledger entry. Here is what the new audit found.

Why the market spent years calling this "Tether FUD"

Doubts about USDT's reserves have followed the company since it settled with the New York Attorney General's office in 2021. The debate over whether USDT is really backed one to one repeated so often that the crypto community gave it its own shorthand, "Tether FUD."

The stakes grew along with the company's size. Tether became one of the largest private holders of U.S. government debt, and USDT turned into the base asset for trading on dozens of exchanges and across DeFi protocols. Any serious loss of confidence in the token could hit the entire crypto market at once, which is why regulators and analysts watched its reserves especially closely.

There is a regulatory backdrop too. In July 2026, U.S. regulators already missed the deadline for finalizing rules under the GENIUS Act, which is meant to set federal reserve requirements for stablecoins. Against that backdrop, a voluntary full audit also looks like a way for Tether to get ahead of future requirements and defuse some criticism before lawmakers spell it out themselves.

Just a few years ago, part of Tether's reserves consisted of commercial paper, short-term corporate debt with origins that were not always transparent. The company gradually shifted that exposure into U.S. Treasuries, which are far easier to verify and price. The KPMG audit effectively closes the book on that multi-year move toward a more conservative portfolio.

What the audit doesn't settle

One clean opinion does not answer every question about Tether. Analysts still recommend treating the result as meaningful, not as final proof of the company's reliability.

• The audit captures a single snapshot as of December 31, 2025, not continuous monitoring of reserves throughout the year.
• KPMG has not disclosed its testing methodology, citing client confidentiality, so independent analysts cannot verify the details on their own.
• Tether has not yet confirmed whether the full audit will become an annual practice or remain a one-time step ahead of possible regulatory requirements.
• Data on the exact reserve breakdown was not made public by KPMG, so the composition of assets is still known mainly from earlier attestations.

What this means for USDT holders

For traders and wallet holders, the news reads as a trust signal. One audit does not guarantee it will always be this way, but it does chip away at the risk skeptics have priced into USDT for years. For exchanges and platforms holding part of their own reserves in USDT, a confirmed $6.814 billion surplus is also a calmer talking point with their own clients and partners.

In Ukraine, USDT remains the most popular asset in P2P trading for hryvnia, so confirmation of its reserves matters directly to anyone who sells USDT for hryvnia on a daily basis. USDT also remains the dominant trading pair on exchanges like Binance, so the stability of its backing affects liquidity across the whole market, not just individual wallet holders.

What comes next

Tether now needs to show whether the full audit becomes a recurring practice rather than a one-off showcase ahead of GENIUS Act debates in the U.S. Congress. The company has not yet announced a timeline for its next review. The market will most likely take the result positively in the short term, since rivals like USDC have spent years using independent reviews as an argument in the fight for market share.

But a single review does not close the topic for good. The question of how often future audits will happen, and whether Tether will agree to publish KPMG's full report rather than just a short summary, will stay open for a while yet.