Tether completed the first full independent audit of its annual financial statements, with KPMG US issuing a clean opinion on the stablecoin issuer’s 2025 accounts.
The audit covered Tether’s balance sheet, income statement and cash flows for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, including the assets backing its issued tokens and the liabilities they represent. Tether said the audited statements showed reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion.
Unlike Tether’s quarterly reserve attestations, which it has published for years, the full audit subjected the company’s broader financial statements and underlying evidence to independent examination, including transactions, systems, ownership records, valuations and counterparties.
Source: Paolo Ardoino
As part of the audit, KPMG physically inspected and counted Tether’s gold holdings, verifying each bar rather than relying solely on custodian records.
Tether said KPMG issued an unqualified opinion on the statements, finding they fairly presented the company’s financial position, results and cash flows in all material respects under US accounting standards.
Related: Tether signs tokenization deal with Nairobi Securities Exchange
Tether’s growing financial footprint
Tether launched its USDt (USDT) stablecoin in 2014 and has since grown into one of the crypto industry’s largest companies, generating more than $10 billion in net profit in 2025. In the second quarter of this year, the company reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit, driven largely by income from its US Treasury holdings and repurchase agreements.
USDT remains the company’s core business and dominates the stablecoin market. Its roughly $183 billion market capitalization accounts for about 61% of the $301 billion market, more than twice the roughly $72 billion held by its nearest rival, Circle’s USDC (USDC), according to DefiLlama.
Stablecoin market cap. Source: DefiLlama
Tether has used its profits to expand beyond stablecoins, investing $20 million each in Argentine neobank Ualá and Brazilian crypto platform Mercado Bitcoin this year, while leading a $50 million funding round for AI sleep technology company Eight Sleep.
The company has expanded its tokenized gold business as well, with physical reserves backing Tether Gold (XAUt) rising 9.5% in the second quarter. At the time of writing, XAUt is the largest tokenized commodity product, with around $2.7 billion in value, according to data from RWA.xyz.
Despite the company’s growth, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has shown little interest in taking it public. In June 2025, amid speculation over a potential Tether IPO, Ardoino wrote on X: “No need to go public.”
Source: Paolo Ardoino
Magazine: Inside the fake crypto startup that fooled North Korean IT workers
