Tether said it has completed its first full financial audit. KPMG U.S. issued an unqualified opinion on the issuer’s 2025 financial statements. The milestone arrives after nearly a decade of questions about what backs the world’s largest stablecoin.
The clean opinion covers Tether International, S.A. de C.V., the entity behind USDT, for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025. Reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.814 billion, according to the audited statements. USDT’s market capitalization now tops $180 billion, per CoinDesk.
A KPMG U.S. spokesperson confirmed the opinion to The Block and declined further comment, citing client confidentiality. “We can confirm that we issued an unqualified opinion on Tether International, S.A. de C.V.’s financial statements in accordance with AICPA standards for the year ending December 31, 2025,” the spokesperson said.
This goes deeper than the quarterly attestations Tether has published for years. Those check specific information at a single date. A full financial audit tests transactions, assets, liabilities, income, and cash flows against supporting evidence. KPMG physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar Tether holds. The firm verified each bar’s existence and identifying information rather than relying on custodian reports, according to The Block.
CEO Paolo Ardoino, in a statement, framed the result against years of skepticism. “For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed,” he said, per CoinDesk.
He told The Block the work extended well past headline figures. “KPMG did not simply review a set of headline figures. KPMG conducted a full and thorough audit in accordance with AICPA standards, examining the assets, transactions, systems, documentation, and other evidence supporting our financial statements,” Ardoino said.
Tether called the engagement the “largest inaugural financial audit in history.” The company has not independently substantiated that claim.
The promise of a full audit dates to 2017, when Tether hired Friedman LLP. That relationship ended without a completed audit. In 2021, Tether paid $18.5 million to settle with the New York Attorney General over claims about its reserves and a separate $41 million CFTC fine over statements that USDT was fully backed by U.S. dollars. The recurring debate over backing earned the shorthand “Tether FUD” in crypto markets.
Tether moved to regular reserve attestations after that, prepared by BDO Italia. Point-in-time snapshots, not full audits. In March 2026, the company announced it had hired a Big Four firm for the full audit without naming it at the time. The Financial Times reported KPMG was hired and PwC engaged to ready internal systems. Tether did not mention PwC in Thursday’s announcement.
CFO Simon McWilliams, appointed in early 2025, oversaw the audited financials, according to The Block. The engagement covered complete financial statements: a full balance sheet with assets composing reserves against liabilities equal to issued tokens, plus income statement, change of equity, and cash flows.
Ardoino positioned the audit as a starting point. “People may describe this as the end of a long journey, but we see it as the beginning of the next one,” he told The Block.
The clean opinion leaves one question open: public access. CoinDesk asked Tether whether it will share KPMG’s full findings and had not received a response at press time. Beyond the aggregate $6.814 billion surplus, the exact breakdown of reserves is not detailed in the available statements.
Whether the audit covers all Tether-affiliated entities remains unclear. Ardoino confirmed Tether International as the USDT issuer but did not explicitly confirm that non-issuing affiliates are included. Holders, as ever, are divided.
The audit arrives as stablecoin regulation tightens. A full audit under AICPA standards, rather than a targeted attestation, is the kind of documentation regulators have flagged as the baseline for issuers operating at Tether’s scale.
