Tether Secures First Full KPMG Audit, Earns Unqualified Opinion

Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, said it has completed its first full, independent audit of its financial statements, receiving an "unqualified" opinion from KPMG U.S. for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2025—effectively a clean audit result. KPMG reported that Tether's reserve assets exceeded its liabilities by $6.814 billion at year-end 2025. The audit also confirmed $141 billion held in U.S. Treasury reserves, positioning Tether among the world's largest holders of U.S. government debt. KPMG additionally conducted a physical inspection and count of Tether's gold holdings to verify the bars' existence and authenticity. Tether has long been a focal point for scrutiny from regulators, media, and traditional finance over whether USDT was fully backed by reserves. Attention intensified after the collapses of TerraUSD (UST), Balance Coin, and TrueUSD. In 2022, USDT briefly broke its dollar peg amid market concern over Tether's commercial paper exposure. Tether later revamped its reserves to be fully backed by U.S. Treasury bills and has since published regular quarterly attestations. The company framed the KPMG engagement as a milestone aimed at addressing transparency concerns and reducing counterparty risk, which could support deeper institutional relationships. The audit also dovetails with the U.S. GENIUS Act, which requires stablecoin issuers with more than $50 billion in circulation to conduct annual financial audits to operate legally in the U.S. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino called the outcome "the best possible audit opinion an independent auditor can issue," sharing the announcement in a post dated Aug. 13, 2026. Despite the positive development, Tether remains excluded from European markets after declining a regulatory requirement to keep 60% of reserves in commercial EU banks. USDT remains the largest stablecoin by market capitalization at $182.97 billion, with USDC second at $72.01 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.