Tether holds 150,000 BTC, 50,000 more than its reserve report shows

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company holds about 150,000 Bitcoin, worth roughly $11.5 billion. That is 50,000 coins more than its latest reserve report implies. The gap is what caught the market's attention.

What did Ardoino say, and why don't the numbers match?

According to Decrypt, the remark came at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, where Tether has run a Bitcoin and stablecoin adoption program since 2022. Ardoino kept it light: the company has "give or take 150,000", which he called "not much, but honest work".

The problem is arithmetic. Tether's third-quarter report values its Bitcoin at $8.37 billion at $83,621 per coin. Divide one by the other and you get roughly 100,060 BTC. The difference is about 50,000 coins, or nearly $3.8 billion, that public documents do not show yet.

What does the reserve report actually cover?

The reserve report only describes assets standing behind issued USDT. It is a snapshot confirmed as of a set date (an attestation), not a full audit. US Treasury bills make up the largest share, around $132.4 billion.

The excess nearly doubled in a quarter. For holders of the coin that is good news, since the cushion between assets and debts grew. But the bitcoin in this table covers only the coins tied to reserves.

How does Tether split reserves from its own money?

Put simply, the company has two separate pockets. One backs USDT, the other is its own balance sheet. That is where, by Tether's account, the extra 50,000 BTC sit.

• Reserves: assets that must cover every USDT issued, mostly US government bills.
• The own balance sheet is built from profit the company chose to invest rather than pay out.
• Since May 2023, Tether has put up to 15% of net operating profit into bitcoin and holds the coins itself, with no third-party custodians.
• Third-quarter profit was $1.5 billion, so money for new purchases keeps coming in.

The setup is perfectly legal. The question is whether anyone outside can check it.

Why does a 50,000-coin gap matter?

Tether has spent years fending off questions about whether USDT is fully backed. This year it began its first full audit with KPMG, which many saw as a long-awaited step. Against that backdrop, $3.8 billion that nobody has seen in a document sounds louder than the company would like.

"We have give or take 150,000 bitcoin ourselves. It's not much, but it's honest work."

- Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, from a keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, November 3, 2026

Ardoino did not say where the extra coins are held or when they were bought. So this is not necessarily a fresh $3.8 billion purchase, and may be an old position that was simply never shown. We think wallet addresses, or even a separate report, would settle the question in a day.

What should USDT holders expect?

For USDT itself nothing changes. Ardoino's words concern the corporate balance sheet, not the reserves, so the dollar peg does not depend on them. He added that Tether serves more than 730 million users and adds about 30 million wallets each quarter.

The practical takeaway is simple. Wait for the KPMG audit results and compare them with the figures from Lugano.