Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the stablecoin issuer holds roughly 150,000 bitcoin, a stash worth about $11.5 billion at current prices. The figure is about 50,000 coins higher than what the company’s latest reserve attestation shows, leaving nearly $3.8 billion in bitcoin unaccounted for in its public filings.

Ardoino made the remarks during a keynote at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano, Switzerland, an event tied to the Bitcoin and stablecoin adoption program Tether has run in the city since 2022. “We have give or take 150,000 bitcoin ourselves. It’s not much, but it’s honest work,” he said. The company used this year’s gathering to disclose a series of figures about its size and holdings, according to a Blockonomi report.

Two Numbers, One Gap

Tether’s third-quarter reserve attestation covers the assets backing its USDT stablecoin, the world’s largest by circulation. The document lists $8.37 billion in bitcoin, valued at $83,621 per coin — a total that works out to about 100,060 BTC. That is roughly 50,000 coins short of Ardoino’s stated figure, a gap worth close to $3.8 billion that Tether’s public filings do not yet account for.

The executive did not say where the additional bitcoin is held or when it was acquired, and his remark does not point to a new purchase of that size. Tether has long maintained that its corporate bitcoin investments are kept separate from the reserves supporting USDT, and the Q3 attestation covers only the assets backing the stablecoin. Ardoino did not provide a breakdown of the two pools during his talk. For USDT holders, the practical upshot is that the reported backing of the token does not rest on the coins Ardoino described — under the company’s framework, those sit on the corporate side of the ledger.

Bitcoin recently traded near $78,576, down about 3.6% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. Because prices have fallen since the end of September, the coins listed in Tether’s report are now worth less than the $8.37 billion shown.

Years of Accumulation

Tether has been building its bitcoin position for years. In May 2023, the company committed to allocating up to 15% of its net realized operating profits to Bitcoin, saying it would hold the coins itself rather than rely on outside custodians — a structure that ties the size of the position to profitability rather than fixing it in advance.

Those purchases have been funded by outsized earnings. Tether reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit for the third quarter alone and has posted billion-dollar quarterly profits throughout the year as the USDT supply has continued to grow.

Reserve Cushion Nearly Doubles

Tether’s Q3 report shows $191.45 billion in assets against $183.50 billion in liabilities, leaving an excess reserve cushion of $7.95 billion. The cushion represents assets held above the amount required to fully back the tokens in circulation, and it stood at $4.11 billion in June. U.S. Treasury bills make up the bulk of the reserves, totaling about $132.4 billion, according to the report.

The company has faced years of questions over whether USDT is fully backed. Attestations are point-in-time snapshots prepared by an outside firm — a lighter form of assurance than a full audit — and for most of its history Tether has published quarterly attestations rather than full financial audits. This year, it began its first full financial audit with KPMG, a long-awaited step toward addressing doubts about its reserves. The audit, along with future quarterly attestations, is where any itemization of corporate bitcoin holdings would have to appear for the gap between Ardoino’s figure and the filings to be reconciled publicly.

Scale and Open-Source Push

Ardoino also highlighted Tether’s reach at the Lugano event. He said the company now serves more than 730 million users worldwide and is adding roughly 30 million wallets each quarter. He also used the stage to promote a suite of open-source technologies funded by Tether’s profits.